


beside you

by daughterofrohan



Series: desperado [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-03-14 18:16:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 28,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3420728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofrohan/pseuds/daughterofrohan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tells himself that she wants him to find her. If she wanted to disappear without a trace, she could have. But there’s one tie they just can’t cut. They’ve been partners for too long.</p><p>Or the one where SHIELD falls and everything goes to hell (again) and the only thing they have left is each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all know the drill. All writing is un-beta'd, so all mistakes are mine. If you recognize it, it probably belongs to Marvel. This is the sequel to [living louder](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2682986/chapters/6001130) and I'd highly recommend reading that one first if you want more of an idea of what's going on. ;) (No pressure, though.)
> 
> (Title shamelessly stolen from a Marianas Trench song.)
> 
> Like all authors, I'm desperate for feedback, so please feel free to talk to me. :)
> 
> (Also I'd like to take this moment to recognize the anonymous friend who sent me the sweetest message about my writing on tumblr the other day. I don't know who you are but if you're reading this, you made my day and I love you.) Speaking of tumblr, I'm over [here](http://daughter-of-rohan.tumblr.com/). (Come talk to me. I love new friends.)
> 
> Updates will be on Mondays, and hopefully less sporadic than usual.
> 
> And without further ado, here's the first chapter! Enjoy! <3

Clint’s in Guam when he receives a text from an unknown number.  “SHIELD compromised” and a string of coordinates. That’s it. But that’s not it because he’d know those coordinates anywhere. _Budapest_.

 _Natasha_.

She’s not in Budapest. Of course she isn’t. They both know better than that. Budapest is her way of telling him that even though everything’s gone to hell, she’s still breathing. Budapest is her way of telling him that SHIELD may be compromised, but they aren’t. Budapest is her way of saying _trust me_.

Budapest means _come home._

Seven and a half hours later, Clint finds himself on the first flight to DC, fingers drumming out an impatient beat on his thigh. He wonders briefly why he’s headed to DC when he knows she’s not going to be at the Triskelion, but he has to start somewhere. He considers calling Stark, but the thought entertains him for mere seconds. If SHIELD really has been compromised, there’s only one person he can trust. He just needs to find her.

A quick internet search in the DC airport tells him that, for the first time in the organization’s history, SHIELD’s secrets are out in the open for whoever wants to see them. He doesn’t take the time to think about what that might mean for him, for Natasha. He can’t afford to look back.

He was in Guam for so long without any contact and all he knows is that Natasha was working a mission with Steve. So he takes a chance on the one person who might still be in the area because even though it’s a dangerous place to be, it’s the last place anyone would expect her to be.

She has the door open and a gun to his head faster than he can blink. “Barton?” she asks incredulously.

“Hey, Maria.”

“Well _you_ fell off the radar entirely. What happened?”

“I’m a little in the dark here, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say HYDRA happened.”

Hill lowers the gun slightly. “You should probably come in.”

“How come you haven’t cleared out yet?” Clint asks, following her into her apartment.

“Reasons like this. SHIELD went to hell, but that doesn’t mean I’m not needed. Besides, this is the last place anyone would look for me.” She looks him dead in the eye. “Fury’s dead.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“What else have you heard?”

“Not much. That’s why I’m here.”

“You’re looking for Romanoff.”

“She’s not here.”

“No. She’s not.”

Clint’s heart sinks at Hill’s response, even though he expected it. A small part of him had been housing a small, absurd hope that she might be here, but the rest of him knows better than that. “Can you help me find her?”

“Not if she doesn’t want to be found.”

“ _Damn_ it!” Clint slams his fist into the wall in frustration. Pain shoots up his arm and he relishes it. He’d gladly take physical pain over whatever the fuck he’s feeling. “Why the _hell_ would she disappear without telling me where she’s going? No hints, no clues, no breadcrumb trails, nothing. Just a string of coordinates leading me to _Budapest_ of all places. Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

Hill levels him with her cool gaze. “Maybe she thinks you’re HYDRA.”

“No.” It hits him like a punch to the stomach and his body goes cold. Could it be possible that, despite everything they’ve been through together, despite the promises they’ve made each other, Natasha honestly believes that he’s HYDRA? No. It’s not possible. He doesn’t want to believe that it’s possible. “ _Budapest,_ Maria. She’d never tell me that unless she knew she could still trust me.”

“So why can’t you find her?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

 ***

Clint looks up as Hill places a steaming cup of coffee by his elbow. “Thanks,” he mumbles distractedly, searching through SHIELD files and mission reports, trying to find _something_ that might point him in the direction of Natasha.

“She’ll be okay, Barton,” Hill tells him gently.

“She’s alone and she just found out that the organization she dedicated her life to has been lying to her. Her entire second chance was a lie. I know her and I know that right now she’s anything _but_ okay.”

Hill walks around the table to look over Clint’s shoulder as he expertly navigates his way through the SHIELD database. “If you’re going to find her, you have to think like her. Somewhere you two have in common. Somewhere SHIELD doesn’t know about.”

He could list a dozen places. Safe houses that they’ve been setting up behind SHIELD’s back over the years, for this very occasion. Places nobody but the two of them knew about in case the entire world went to hell and they could only trust each other. It had almost seemed laughable at the time. The world, he thinks, has a sick and twisted sense of humour.

 ***

He finds her in Vermont, eventually. It’s closer than he expects her to be, but he understands. Understands the conflict between the need to run away and the need to stay close. Understands how she wants to escape to the ends of the earth, but that would mean leaving everything behind. And as much as she prides herself on belonging everywhere and nowhere at the same time, it’s never possible to sever ties completely. He tells himself that she wants him to find her. If she wanted to disappear without a trace, she could have. But there’s one tie they just can’t cut. They’ve been partners for too long.

The sun has long since set by the time he gets there. He has a key to the safe house, but he doesn’t use it. She deserves the opportunity to turn him away if she wants to. He can give her at least that.

He’s not expecting her to open the door, but she comes on the third knock. As he steps through the doorway he takes in the sight of her; baggy sweats, messy hair pulled back in a ponytail looking like it hasn’t been washed in a week, tear tracks still wet on her cheeks. The words he spent the six hour drive rehearsing all die on his tongue because he doesn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t this. He does the only thing he can, since they’ve never really needed words anyways. He opens his arms. It’s a mark of the trust she still has in him, despite everything they’ve been through, that she doesn’t hesitate.

He can feel her beginning to shake in his arms and he tightens his hold on her as if he can prevent her from falling apart if he holds on tight enough. Soon the sobs are wracking her entire body and he whispers her name in her ear over and over, like a mantra. He holds her and he lets her cry for everything that she’s lost and he doesn’t know at what point his own tears start to fall but it makes sense, because he’s lost just as much as she has and here they are standing in this house that isn’t a home in a world full of pain and loss and they’re all the other has left.

Eventually the tears stop and the shaking subsides, but they still don’t let go of each other because they have nothing to prove anymore and they both need the reassurance that they still have one thing left to hold on to. All the fight and the fire drains out of her at once and she goes limp in his arms and he tightens his hold on her as he guides them both gently to the ground, pulling her into his lap and rocking her slowly.

“I don’t know who I am anymore, Clint.” Her voice is small and quiet and vulnerable when she finally speaks and his heart breaks for her.

“You’re Natasha,” he says simply. He knows it’s not enough; knows what she’s feeling, because he feels it too.

She shakes her head. “That’s not me. Natasha…she belonged to SHIELD. I don’t belong anywhere.”

“That’s not true.” He holds her tighter, trying to show her everything that he can’t say. “You belong right here, Tash.”

“Is anything true anymore?” she chokes out.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, stroking her hair. “I can think of one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You and me.”

She looks up at him then, her tear stained face making her look impossibly young. “I’m not HYDRA.”

Clint lets out a quiet laugh that’s part relief and part exhaustion. “I know you’re not HYDRA, Nat. Do you need to hear me say it?”

She shakes her head. “I never doubted you.”

He reaches up to the base of her throat, brushing his thumb against the point of the arrow hanging there. “You knew I would find you.”

“What makes you say that?”

He taps the arrow lightly. “You’re still wearing this.”

“It makes me stronger,” she admits, her voice barely a whisper. “I don’t think I would have had the strength to do what needed to be done if you hadn’t been there with me.”

“Do what needed to be…Nat what are you talking about?”

“I only told you part of the truth, Clint. If I’d told you everything, you never would have come here.”

“That’s not true.”

She looks down and he hates how small she becomes. “How can you know that?”

He takes her chin in his hand gently, tilting her face up so he can look into her eyes. “Natasha. Tell me. Whatever it is, it won’t make me think any different of you. I promise.” He tries to pour all his sincerity into the promise. _I love you_ , he wants to scream at her. _Nothing you say or do will ever make me stop loving you_.

Natasha takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I told you SHIELD was compromised.”

“That’s the only thing you told me.”

“I did it, Clint.”

He doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.

“HYDRA was in so deep with SHIELD,” Natasha continues. “There was no way to expose one without exposing the other. Our lives, our secrets, they’re all out in the open. And it’s my fault.”

“Okay.”

“That’s all? ‘Okay?’”

“I don’t know what else you want me to say. You did the right thing, Nat. You did the only thing you could. And if I know HYDRA like I think I do, the only reason we’re still breathing and the entire world hasn’t gone to shit is because you made that call.”

“Our pasts, Clint, everything we’ve done-“

“Was there another way?”

Silence.

“Natasha. Look me in the eyes and tell me there was another way.”

“There wasn’t,” she whispers.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispers back. For the first time, as she looks up at him, he notices the bags under her eyes, the exhaustion dragging down every part of her features. He hates that she hasn’t been taking care of herself. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“Through the night?” She shakes her head. “I can’t remember.”

“Come on. Sleep.” Clint stands, lifting Natasha’s small frame easily. She turns her head, pressing her face into his chest as he carries her to the bedroom. He tries to set her down in the bed, but ends up climbing in beside her when she won’t let go of him.

“Please don’t leave me,” she whispers, twisting the knife in his heart even further.

He loops an arm around her waist, holding her tightly against him, needing to feel every part of her in his arms. “Shhhh,” he soothes, trailing his fingers up and down her spine. “Sleep, Tasha. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Clint tries to clear his mind as he follows Natasha into an uneasy sleep. He tries not to think about Fury or SHIELD or HYDRA or anything but the rise and fall of Natasha’s chest as she breathes. He knows they’re going to have to deal with everything eventually. But for now they’re together, and they’re safe, and that’s all that matters.

Of course, he reflects later, it’s never that simple.

She wakes up screaming.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely LOVED writing this chapter so I hope you guys enjoy reading it! :)   
> And I know I say this all the time but PLEASE feel free to talk to me/let me know what you think. I love getting feedback. (Seriously. Even if you hate my writing with a burning passion, I want to know. Although I'm not sure why you'd be reading but anyways...)
> 
> Enjoy! I love you all! <333

“You’re okay. You’re okay, Nat. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

“Clint?” Her voice is hoarse from screaming, her forehead shining with sweat. Her eyes are wide and terrified.

“Yeah. I’m here. I’ve got you.” The tortured screams she lets out in her sleep shake him to his core every time he hears them, but he tries not to let it show. He knows that in these moments, she needs him to be strong for her. He’s trying, _God_ , he’s trying.

“Clint. Oh God, Clint.” She sobs his name into his shoulder as she slowly comes out of her nightmare.

“Come on,” he says quietly when she stops shaking, rolling out of bed and holding out his hand. She slips her hand into his and it’s so small, _she’s_ so small, so fragile, so breakable. And underneath all her fragility she’s still the strongest person he’s ever known.

Clint doesn’t need to ask what cupboard she keeps the tea in, or where to find the mugs. All their safe houses are set up the same way out of convenience but it’s more than that. He knows her so deeply, knows her to the bone, even after all this time of being apart. Even after their lives crashing and burning and SHIELD falling to shit around them, they’re still constant. She’s the one thing he can always come back to.

“You can see the stars so much better here,” Natasha says as he’s putting two mugs of water in the microwave. Clint turns to see her perched on the windowsill, knees drawn up to her chest. It’s the position she takes when she’s trying to withdraw into herself and shut out the world.

The microwave beeps and Clint takes the mugs out, slipping a tea bag into each one before crossing the room to hand one to Natasha. “Was it a new dream this time?” he asks her.

She shakes her head. “The same one. It’s always the same one. You’re…somewhere. It doesn’t matter where. And I’m trying to find you but I’m always too late. You die every time.” Her voice breaks. “I never get to say goodbye.”

“When SHIELD fell-“

“I didn’t know what to think, Clint. You could have been dead, you could have been captured, you could have been _anywhere_ and all I had was the number of your goddamn burner phone that I pulled from the SHIELD data before I released it to the whole damn world.”

“You did the right thing,” he tells her again.

“Yeah,” she says absently, staring out the window like the sky holds the all the answers to the questions written on her soul. “But at what cost, Clint?”

He sighs heavily. “I don’t know.”

“All that time,” she says quietly. “All that time I thought I was making it right again. A second chance. That’s what you told me. How much blood is on my hands because of SHIELD, Clint? How many more innocent lives did I take while they whispered lies in my ear and told me I was fighting for the right reasons? How could I be so _stupid_?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Nat. How could you have known? How could any of us have known?”

“I guess I just finally thought I knew whose lies I was telling. I guess they were right. I’m just a puppet. The only difference is the person pulling the strings.”

Clint doesn’t have to ask who _they_ are. He knows. God, he knows, and it kills him. Just as he’s about to say something, _anything_ , her phone buzzes beside her.

Natasha picks up the phone, looks at the display, and then puts it back down, looking Clint in the eyes as if daring him to challenge her. He does. “Who is it?”

“Steve.” The phone buzzes again, insistently.

“Are you going to answer it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She shrugs. Clint sighs, reaching around her to pick up the phone. “Barton,” he says, bringing it to his ear.

 _“Barton?”_ Steve’s voice in his ear is incredulous.

“The one and only.”

“So she found you.”

Clint glances up at Natasha, who’s watching him carefully. “Yeah. She did.”

“Are you two okay?”

Clint hesitates and then nods, forgetting for a moment that Steve can’t see him. “We will be.”

“Okay,” Steve says calmly. “Okay. That’s all I need to know. Take care of yourself, Clint.”

“You too, Steve.” Clint glances at Natasha as he hangs up. She’s still watching him, her features hovering between curiosity and the ever-present sadness that hasn’t left her face since he stepped through the front door. She’s still beautiful when she’s sad, hell, she’s beautiful all the time, but he misses her smile. He misses her laugh. He misses the moments when they’re alone and she’ll let her guard down and she’s so unapologetically _Natasha_.

“What did Steve want?”

“To make sure you’re okay.”

“I don’t need him to take care of me.”

“It’s what friends do, Nat. It’s what people do when they care about you.”

“I don’t want them to care,” she whispers. “It’s easier if no one cares.”

“That’s not what you said after New York.”

 _New York._ It brings back a host of memories that she’d rather forget. Days when he would stare at the wall and refuse to put in his hearing aids and she’d sign until her hands were cramped and aching, hoping that _something_ would get through to him. Days he refused to touch her because he was terrified of hurting her. Nights he’d wake up and hold her so tightly it hurt, sobbing into her shoulder. Days when he would take his bow out to the woods and shoot until his fingers bled, when she would wipe the blood off of his hands in a way that felt too symbolic.

“You fixed me after New York,” he tells her, his hand strong and steady on the small of her back. “Now let me fix you.”

She leans her head against his hip and he moves his hand up absently, caressing the back of her head, fingers tangling in her curls. “I don’t think you can fix me this time.”

She doesn’t talk about the week after SHIELD fell, before he found her. She doesn’t talk about the terror that gripped her, causing her to shake so violently that it felt like the world was ending. She doesn’t talk about how she stopped eating because she couldn’t keep anything down, stopped sleeping because she’d wake up with tears in her eyes and his name on her lips. She doesn’t talk about the arrow around her neck and how close she came to throwing it in a river or leaving it to gather dust on the side of the highway because it’s a constant reminder of the love she doesn’t deserve.

She doesn’t tell him about the nights before he found her, about holding a knife to her skin or pressing the barrel of a gun to her head and knowing that she’s too much of a coward to end her own life. She doesn’t need to tell him because he knows. She remembers finding him holding a gun to his own head a week after New York. Remembers the look in his eyes as she forced the barrel away from his head, the desperation he kissed her with. It still gives her chills.

She wonders if that same desperation is what he sees in her right now.

Suddenly she’s flooded with the gripping desire to touch him, to feel every part of him against every part of her. She needs him in a way she can’t quite explain, can’t quite understand. And it terrifies her. She stands, pressing her lips against his fiercely, and for a second, nothing else matters.

Her body is a desert and his lips are the rain and no matter how much she takes it’s still not enough. He tugs at her sweatshirt and she rips it off impatiently, hissing as the movement aggravates the still-healing bullet wound in her shoulder. Clint freezes at her sharp intake of breath, brushing his fingertips lightly across the bandages covering her shoulder. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Natasha.” He knows she’s no stranger to pain, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it. “You don’t have to be strong for me.”

She nods, biting her lip.

“What happened?” Clint presses, his hand coming to rest lightly on her side.

“Remember my ghost?”

He nods.

“Turns out I’m not the only one he’s haunting.”

“Steve?”

“They were _friends_ , Clint. Best friends. Until _they_ found him and brainwashed him, took away everything except the desire to hurt and destroy and kill. The same thing they did to me. The same thing they did to all of us. But he couldn’t fight it, couldn’t remember anything about Steve, not even his name.”

“He remembered you.”

“Enough to put a bullet in my shoulder.” She turns so that he can see her unbandaged shoulder and the white lump of scar tissue that disfigures it, the scar he likes to think of as his. “I match now.”

Clint bends down, pressing his lips to the scar on her right shoulder. “I wish you would tell me when you’re hurt,” he murmurs against her skin.

“I would if it mattered.”

“It always matters to me.”

“I need you to believe me when I tell you I’m okay.”

“But you’re not okay.”

He waits for her to deny it, to try to keep up her act even though she _knows_ she can’t play him. But she doesn’t. Instead she takes his hand, gripping his fingers tightly. “I know.”

“What do you need?” he whispers.

There are a million things she wants to tell him. But when she looks at him, her eyes shining with tears, only one word comes out. “You.”

When they kiss this time, it’s gentler. It’s _I missed you_ and _I love you_ and _let me fix you._ They stumble towards the couch, tripping over each other because neither one of them wants to let go. His lips find the scar on her shoulder again and he kisses it over and over with a tenderness that threatens to break her heart.

They fall together like they were never meant to be apart and Clint doesn’t think he could ever tire of the raw vulnerability in her eyes, the way his name falls from her lips like a confession. She’s shaking when she presses her face into his shoulder, and he can feel the tears trickling down his back.

“Tasha,” he whispers, and she pulls back slightly, looking up at him through eyelashes clumped together by tears. It’s another knife in his gut, and he can’t help but wonder when he’s going to bleed out. “Why are you crying?”

She shakes her head slightly, pressing her lips to his, and the sadness she carries with her is so tangible that he can taste the salt of her tears on her tongue.

“Hey,” he says gently as her forehead comes to rest against his. “Talk to me.”

“What if they did it to me? Brainwashed me, turned me back into a monster, made me forget everything I’ve ever loved?” Her voice is so quiet he has to strain to hear her. “I don’t want to forget you, Clint. I don’t want to forget this.”

“You won’t.”

“How can you say that?”

“I won’t let them, Tasha.” He presses against the arrow around her neck and the warmth of his fingers burns, a sharp contrast to the cool metal. “I made you a promise, remember? Whoever’s out there, if they’re still looking for you, I won’t let them find you. And if they do, I’ll find them. I’ll chase them to the ends of the earth and I’ll bring you back home, Natasha. If you’ve ever believed me, believe me now.”

She brings her own hand up to where his is still resting against the arrow at the base of her throat, twining her fingers through the chain, through his fingers, silently begging him to never let go of her.

“Is that what you’re worried about?” he asks her quietly. “That they’ll find you?”

“My secrets are everywhere.” She shifts off of him slightly, wrapping her arms around herself to hide the fact that she’s shivering. “SHIELD was protecting me, but SHIELD is gone. Anyone can find me. They already proved that. _He_ already proved that.”

Clint reaches down and grabs the nearest shirt – his – off of the floor, handing it to Natasha. She accepts it gratefully, pulls it over her head and then leans into him as he wraps an arm around her waist. “I’ll keep you safe, Tash,” he says, his voice soft. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She rests her head against his chest, letting the beating of his heart soothe her as her breathing evens out. “Clint?”

“Yeah?”

“Love sucks.”

He lets out a short laugh. “Yeah,” he says, pulling her closer. “It does. But it’s worth it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must apologize once again for my lateness in updating. (In my defense, I was stranded in North Carolina.)
> 
> This chapter may or may not have been written under the influence of alcohol.
> 
> Any/all thoughts would be appreciated. <3 (TALK TO ME I'M SO LONELY.)
> 
> And finally, thanks for sticking with me. I suck and you all rock. <333 Enjoy!

“Steve went after him.” It isn’t a question. Sunlight is beginning to stream through the window and Natasha’s lying with her head in his lap, his fingers weaving gently through her hair.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Him and Sam.”

“Sam?”

“Wilson. New guy. You’d like him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And they went after Barnes? Why?”

“You know why.”

“Nat-“

“The same reason I’d do it if it was you, Clint.” She takes a deep breath. “The same reason you’d do it if it was me.”

“Barnes-“

“Isn’t a monster,” Natasha says, cutting him off. “He’s a product. A result. Like me.” It amazes him how she can speak so calmly about the man she once counted among her demons, the man who broke her to the point that she didn’t think she could ever love again. _Love is for children_.

“The first time I told you that you weren’t a monster you didn’t believe me.” Clint can feel her tense against him and he knows she’s still on edge. Her feigned relaxation isn’t so much of an act as it is a desperate attempt to calm the nerves that are still frayed from HYDRA, the encounter with the Winter Soldier, the collapse of SHIELD. It isn’t working.

“I was a different person back then,” she tells him finally.

Clint looks down as he runs his fingers through her hair absently, watches how the sunlight reflects off of each strand, turning it to fire. He’s always seen her as fire. Back in Warsaw when they first met she’d been a raging inferno, hell-bent on destruction, consuming herself along with everything else in her path. She’s still fire, she’ll always be fire, but it’s different now. She’s the wavering candlelight in the window guiding him home in the midst of a dark storm, always guiding him home.

She looks up at him with sad eyes, eyes that have seen too much hurt, and his breath catches in his throat as he asks her, “Who are you now?”

“I don’t know.” It comes out as a whisper.

“After New York,” he begins, gauging her reaction, “I thought I’d lost myself. I would have lost myself if I didn’t have you there to remind me of who I was.”

“So remind me,” she whispers, and his heart shatters into a thousand new fragments. The fragility in her voice kills him and he knows it’s killing her too. He knows she hates being weak, even when it’s just the two of them. He still needs to remind her sometimes that it’s okay to fall apart.

“You prefer music that doesn’t have words,” he begins. “You wake up at ungodly hours of the morning to see the sunrise because it reminds you that there’s still something beautiful in the world. You feed stray cats and you dance when you think no one’s watching.” She closes her eyes as he continues. “You hate the cold but you love the snow. You always lose track of time when you’re reading.” His voice softens. “When I couldn’t hear, you were the one who made sure I could still understand.” He looks down, his hands stilling in her hair as he sees her lying there with her eyes closed. “Nat?”

“’M awake,” she says sleepily. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“That person you’re talking about. Is that how you see me? After everything I’ve done?”

“Love is blind,” he says quietly. “Besides, we’re done keeping score here.”

Natasha offers him another sad half-smile and Clint finds himself wondering if he’ll ever see her happy again. He looks at her, really looks at her, sees her in the way that only he can. He sees the dark circles under her eyes that almost look like bruises, the result of too many sleepless nights. He sees the thinness in her face and the way his shirt hangs off of her small frame and he knows she hasn’t been taking care of herself.

“Natasha. When’s the last time you ate?”

She shakes her head. “Day before yesterday, maybe. I don’t remember.”

“Are you hungry?”

She shrugs. “I guess I should be. I don’t know.”

“Come on,” he says, sliding off the couch and offering his hand. “You need to eat.”

Natasha takes his hand, following him as he leads the way to the kitchen. Clint doesn’t miss the way that she clings to him as if she needs reassurance that he’s there, that he’s real, that he isn’t going to leave. She leans into him like she’s drawing her strength from him, like she can’t even stand without his support. He doesn’t even want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t found her.

Clint throws some canned soup in a pot to let it simmer on the stove because Natasha’s never been good at stocking a safe house kitchen and it’s the only thing that doesn’t take too much preparation. Natasha sits at the table and watches him quietly, her bare legs drawn up to her chest, his shirt hanging loosely off of her uninjured shoulder.

He pours the soup into a bowl when it’s finished heating, setting it down in front of Natasha. “Eat,” he tells her firmly.

“You need to eat, too.”

Clint shakes his head. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

“I always worry about you.”

Clint gets up and grabs a second spoon from the drawer before making his way back to the table. “We’ll share.”

They eat in silence, never taking their eyes off of each other. Natasha presses her free hand into his under the table and he holds on tightly, rubbing soothing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb.

“So, what now?” Natasha asks finally after they’ve finished eating.

“Well there’s no point going back to SHIELD. Not yet, anyways. With Fury gone-“

Natasha interrupts him. “He’s not dead.”

“He faked his death?”

“I saw his heart stop beating, Clint.” Natasha starts to shake again, fingers trembling against Clint’s hand. “I saw him die and I couldn’t stop it. I mourned him like a father, I’ve laid my life on the line for that man countless times, and he didn’t even trust me enough to tell me he was alive until I almost bled out and died myself.”

“Come here.” Clint opens his arms, pulling her into his lap as her body keeps shaking. “We don’t have to worry about anything yet. I talked to Hill back in DC and I’d say she’s expecting us to be off the radar for a while.”

“We can’t hide forever.”

“No,” he sighs. “No. We can’t. But home’s never been a place for us, Tash, and now we have nowhere to go.”

“We could go back to New York. Tony said there’s always a place for us at the tower. I think he meant it.”

Clint looks down at her in surprise. “I never thought I’d hear you say that. You really want to go back?”

“I never said I want to,” she says, leaning back against his chest. “I said we could.”

“We have time. We don’t have to talk about it right now.”

“Okay,” she agrees.

They drift back into silence but it’s an easier silence this time. They’re still both broken and raw and desperately trying to hold each other together, but they have something they haven’t had in the past. They have time.

“So,” Clint says finally, breaking the silence. “How have you been?”

Natasha laughs softly. “I guess we kind of skipped that part, didn’t we?”

“Don’t we always?” He runs his hands over her forearms, fingertips tracing the symmetrical scars on the undersides of her wrists. “Maybe we shouldn’t. Talk to me.” She wonders if he’s thinking about the day he found her lying in a pool of her own blood because she refused to talk to him, to _anyone_ , about her nightmares and the emptiness that threatened to consume her. She wonders if he can feel the new scars, the ones from a week ago that still haven’t fully healed. His eyes are sad when she turns to look at him.

“It’s been bad, Clint,” she tells him, her voice muted. He doesn’t need her to tell him that. It was apparent the minute he found her, even more obvious when he found out that she hasn’t been eating or sleeping. But admitting it feels like a weight off of her chest and she can breathe a little easier now. She says it again, not because he needs to hear it but because she needs to say it. “It’s been bad.”

“This bad?” he asks, lifting her left wrist and tracing the four new scars with his index finger.

“Yeah,” she whispers.

“Natasha.” His voice is soft and gentle and so full of love that it makes her want to cry. “Please don’t hurt yourself.”

Her voice breaks when she tells him, “I thought you were gone.”

“Can you promise me something, Nat?”

“Anything.” She knows that what he asks of her isn’t going to be easy, but she could never say no to him. Not even in Warsaw when she had a bullet in her shoulder and her will to die was stronger than her will to live had ever been. “ _Come to SHIELD with me”_ , he’d said. And while her mind screamed no, the only thing that had come out of her mouth was “ _Okay”._

“Promise me,” Clint says, his hand closing around her wrist, “that no matter what happens to me, no matter what happens to _us_ , you’ll keep surviving. No matter what.”

“Clint…”

“Promise me, Natasha.”

She shakes her head sadly. “I can’t.”

“Natasha.”

“My whole life, I never had a home. And to have that with you, to know what that’s like, and then to lose it and just keep on living like the best thing in the world never happened to me?” She shakes her head again. “You know I can’t do that. I can’t go back to what I was now that I know what it feels like to be alive.”

Clint reaches up, brushing her hair back from her face slowly, tenderly. He leans in just as slowly, pressing his lips to her forehead. “I love you,” he murmurs against her skin. “You know that?”

Natasha nods mutely, tears pricking at her eyes again. Her throat is too tight for her to speak, so she folds down the middle and ring fingers of her right hand, pressing the sign into his side so he can feel it against his ribs, against his heart. _I love you_.

A knock at the door causes them to jump apart like they’ve been burned. Natasha slides off Clint’s lap in one fluid motion, reaching under the kitchen table to grab one of the multiple guns Clint knows she has hidden. “Were you followed here?” she asks him in a low voice.

He shakes his head, holding his hand out for the gun she’s pulling out of the pantry. He curls his fingers around the grip and follows Natasha as she moves silently towards the door.

“How could anyone find us?” he asks quietly. “Nobody knows this address, not even Fury. Nobody except…” he trails off as Natasha rises up on her toes to look through the peephole in the door. When she turns back to him, her face is pale white like she’s just seen a ghost. “Nat,” he says urgently. “Nat, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head wordlessly, eyes wide as she steps back from the door. Clint takes a step towards her, gripping her forearms tightly as he stares into her eyes. “Hey. Talk to me. What is it?”

The knocking comes again. Stronger this time, more insistent. Clint’s eyes flick to the door and then back to his partner. He raises an eyebrow. A question.

“Open the door,” she whispers.

Clint swallows hard, reaching out for the doorknob. He looks back at Natasha for reassurance and she nods once, still wide-eyed with shock. Stretching his other hand back to grasp her fingers tightly, Clint turns the handle.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's not Monday, I'm just updating early for fun and stuff. Mad shoutout to Sarah (TheRedGlass) for beta-ing this chapter because I tend to make typos when I write under the influence of alcohol (love u trash friend).
> 
> [insert sentimental rant followed by PLS TALK TO ME I'M SO LONELY here]
> 
> Enjoy! <3

He doesn’t know what he expected but it’s not this, never this. He feels Natasha’s hand tighten around his, hears her sharp intake of breath, and he knows without looking that she has a gun trained on their visitor’s head. He knows she won’t shoot without his signal. He knows he won’t give it. Not yet, at least. Not until he’s sure that this is what it looks like.

“Hey, guys.” His voice is warm and apologetic and so real but it _can’t_ be real because he died, his heart stopped beating, he was _buried_ and their tears left marks on his headstone and there’s no way he’s here in front of them, alive.

Clint moves to the left ever so slowly, placing himself between Natasha and the man in front of him, shielding her. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

“I’m sorry,” Coulson says, hair damp from the rain that’s just begun to fall outside. (But it’s not Coulson, Clint has to remind himself, because Coulson’s dead.) “Clint, Natasha. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re not real.” Natasha’s voice is hard, blazing. She steps up beside Clint, lacing her fingers more firmly through his, her gun still levelled with Coulson’s head.

He raises his hands slowly in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m real and I’m not dead and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Natasha’s face is a hard mask, such a drastic change from mere minutes ago in the kitchen. It gives Clint chills, just looking at her. “How do we know you’re not lying?”

“There’s one way,” Clint tells her quietly, squeezing her hand. He turns to Coulson. “You wrote us letters. Hill gave them to us after you died.” Natasha grips his hand even harder as she realizes what he’s doing. “What did you say to me, Coulson? What was in that letter?”

“I said I was proud of you,” Coulson says in an even voice. “I told you to let yourself be human.” His eyes soften as he looks down at Clint’s hand joined with his partner’s. “I told you to look after Natasha.”

“Tasha,” Clint whispers, squeezing her hand gently again. “Put down the gun.”

If it was anyone else telling her to disarm herself, Natasha wouldn’t even consider listening. But this is Clint, this is her partner, and she trusts him implicitly, sometimes more than she trusts herself. Never taking her eyes off of Coulson, she lowers the gun to the ground slowly. Clint lets go of her hand and she’s about to protest until he wraps an arm around her waist protectively, pulling her into his side.

The rain outside begins to fall in earnest. “Are you just going to stand out there and get soaked?” Clint asks their old handler in a choked voice. “Come inside, Phil.”

Clint keeps his arm around Natasha as they head wordlessly into the kitchen, letting go once he reaches the counter so he can start the coffeemaker. She hovers behind him uncertainly like she’s not sure what to do with herself, like she’s still in shock. He doesn’t blame her. She has too many ghosts already. “Tea?” he asks her quietly, pulling three mugs from the cupboard.

She nods wordlessly, but there’s gratitude in her eyes. He’s always known exactly what she needs without her ever having to ask, and she loves him for it.

“You owe us an explanation,” Clint says firmly, carrying the mugs over to the table. Lightning flashes through the window, accompanied a few seconds later by a distant clap of thunder. He sets one of the coffees in front of Coulson and pulls out chairs for himself and Natasha. She sits down wordlessly, drawing her knees up to her chest. He touches her shoulder lightly to ground her, remind her that he’s here, that it’s okay, and she looks up, giving him a soft smile shadowed by that ever-present sadness.

“I really did die,” Coulson begins, taking a sip of his coffee. “My heart stopped. That part was true. But they brought me back and kept the knowledge limited to anyone Level 7 and above.”

“You should have told us,” Clint says. “You’re our handler. We deserved to know.”

Coulson runs a hand through his hair distractedly. “It wasn’t up to me. Fury thought it was in the best interests of the team to, uh, withhold the information. If it was up to me, you would have been the first ones to know. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” Natasha’s voice is ice.

“Tash-” Clint begins, but she cuts him off.

“Trust you?” she asks again coldly. “My whole life I’ve heard those words and they were always spoken by people who wanted to hurt me. I came to SHIELD and you never asked me to trust you and I thought you were _different_ but all you did was lie to me, use me, manipulate me. Just like _them._ ” She stands up and as she does she glares at him, fury etched on every inch of her face. “Don’t _ever_ ask me to trust you again.”

“Natasha-” Clint tries again, but she turns without giving him or Coulson a second glance. He hears the door slam behind her, followed by another clap of thunder, louder this time.

Clint turns back to look at his former handler. Coulson’s eyes are full of understanding. He knows Natasha, knows the push and pull of her, knows her desperate need to run out into a storm because the walls make her feel too contained. He doesn’t know about the knife and the scars because that’s Natasha’s story to tell, but he knows that she can’t be alone, not now. “Go,” he says gently. Clint doesn’t need to be told twice.

Clint rips out his hearing aids, dropping them unceremoniously on the table before racing out the door after his partner. The rain is coming down hard and the last thing he wants is his aids getting wet. He’s immediately drenched within his first steps out the door. Lightning flashes across the sky again, illuminating the long gravel driveway that stretches out in front of them. But Natasha wouldn’t have gone that way. He turns towards the trees.

“Natasha!” he yells into the wind, heedless of who or what might be around. He doesn’t know if she can hear him, he can’t even hear himself, but he has to try. “Natasha!” he yells again as he runs into the forest, rain pelting him in the face.

He hopes she hasn’t gone far because he doesn’t know how he’s going to be able to find her in the middle of a thunderstorm when he can’t hear a goddamn thing. And then he sees it out of the corner of his eye. A flash of red.

“Natasha!” She hesitates, long enough for him to catch up. He can make out her lips moving through the rain. “Tash,” he says, pointing to his ears. “I can’t hear you.”

She switches to sign language mid-sentence. _“-need to be alone. Please.”_

 _“I’m not leaving you alone,”_ he tells her. _“You can’t run away from this, Natasha. I won’t let you.”_

The fight drains out of her. Her signs are small, defeated, as she tells him, _“I don’t need another reason to be angry at the world.”_

Maybe it’s the way she looks so small and vulnerable as she admits one of her darkest secrets. Maybe it’s the way she still manages to look beautiful with her rain-soaked hair and his t-shirt plastered to her skin. Maybe it’s the ghost of the spark he used to see in her eyes, the one he can still see shadows of if he looks close enough. Maybe there’s no reason.

He kisses her. He can’t help himself.

He tries to put everything into it that he can’t ever say. He can taste her bitterness on her tongue. He can feel her anger, her burning hatred at the world, in the way her lips are hard and bruising against his. He murmurs her name against her mouth as they cling to each other desperately; drowning, burning, falling, flying.

When Clint finally pulls back for air, she buries her face in his shoulder and he can feel her trembling. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her closer. He’s stopped keeping count of the number of times he’s held her together these past few days. It doesn’t matter because they don’t keep score. They’re partners. This is what they do.

 _“Come on,”_ he signs one-handed, awkward with such little space between them. _“Let’s go back inside.”_

Another flash of lightning cuts through the darkness and Clint feels Natasha tug on his hand gently. He looks down at her quizzically and she offers him a small smile, a shadow of the ones that used to light up her face, as she begins to run.

Hand in hand, they sprint through the trees in the pouring rain and it feels like freedom. The wind whips around them and they’re soaked to the bone and the lightning flashes again as they run, illuminating the rain-drenched world around them. By the time they reach the porch they’re gasping for air and Natasha collapses against Clint, breathless. He can feel her shaking again and he’s about to ask her if she’s okay until he realizes that she’s laughing.

A pang of sadness hits him briefly, the fact that she’s _laughing_ and he can’t hear it, but then she looks up at him and it doesn’t matter anymore. Her smile is pure and real and uninhibited, the smile she only ever shares with him, and he falls in love with her all over again.

They traipse into the kitchen, leaving trails of water behind them as the rainwater streams off of their clothes and hair. Coulson, still sitting in the same place he was when they left, raises an eyebrow as Clint shove his hearing aids back into his ears. “Are you two okay?”

Clint glances sideways at Natasha and she smiles up at him, looking the most at ease he’s seen her since he got here. “Yeah.” He nods, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pressing his lips briefly to her temple. “Yeah. We’re okay.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Managed to get this finished before week from hell part 2 starts (yay midterms!) Hopefully I'll have time to update again by next Monday.
> 
> This is your friendly reminder that if you haven't listened to the song Beside You by Marianas Trench, you should go do that. Now. It's perfect and flawless and emotional and you need it in your life.
> 
> And here's my desperate plea for feedback because it's literally crack to me. I KNOW you guys are reading this and I really want to know what you think. (TALK TO ME I'M LONELY)
> 
> Enjoy <3

“So where’ve you been?” Clint asks. They’re seated around the kitchen table again, but the atmosphere is nowhere near as tense as it was before. Natasha’s leaning back in her chair with her feet in his lap, damp hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looks at ease in a way that’s not an act. Well, not completely an act. Her relaxation is still a little forced, the tension in her shoulders isn’t completely gone, but the smile she gives him when she catches him staring at her is softer, warmer. Little by little, she’s coming back to him.

“Tahiti.”

“Must be nice,” Natasha intones drily. “We’re all running for our lives, all our covers are blown, I almost got _killed_. Meanwhile, you were on _vacation_. Tell me more about your difficult life.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation,” Coulson says carefully. “Coming back from the dead is harder than it sounds.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “Coming back is always the hard part, isn’t it?”

“Natasha-”

“I’m glad you’re back, Phil.”

“Don’t get too sentimental, Nat,” Clint tells her. “He’s probably only here to make good on his promise of tracking us down for that Bogotá paperwork we never turned in.”

“You got me,” Coulson says, holding up his hands in mock surrender.

“You told me you turned that paperwork in!” Natasha says indignantly, kicking her feet off of his lap and walking over to the fridge. She tosses a beer to Clint and grabs two more, handing one to Coulson as she abandons her chair at the table in favour of Clint’s lap. He drapes his arm loosely around her waist, surprised at how purposely physical she’s being with him.

“I lied,” he says casually as he uses the edge of the table to open his beer. “You always get too worked up over the paperwork.”

She elbows him in the ribs. “Maybe I wouldn’t get so worked up if I wasn’t the only one in this partnership who does my goddamn job!”

“Nat it’s been two years, and the fact that you still care about this paperwork proves my point.”

“There’s the team I remember,” Coulson says, smiling his fatherly smile. “I knew you guys were in there somewhere.”

If they try hard enough, they can pretend that it’s before. They can pretend that SHIELD never fell, that they’re sitting around sharing a drink because it’s their post-mission ritual. It works, for a while. They exchange stories about botched missions, about the royal fuck-up in Budapest that culminated in Natasha walking away with a knife embedded in her thigh (because they can laugh about it now). Coulson recounts accidentally walking in on a sacred tribal ritual in the middle of the Amazon during his first years as a field agent. Clint recalls being lost in the Welsh countryside on a mission gone wrong. “He called me,” Natasha remembers, laughter in her eyes as she tells the story. “I was in Detroit and I woke up to a phone call at 4 in the morning. ‘Nat I’m lost in Wales and I don’t speak the language!’” Clint ducks his head, smiling into her shoulder as Coulson throws his head back, laughing. If he’s honest with himself, this is the happiest and most carefree that he’s seen Natasha since before New York. He tries to hold on to every moment of it, imprint every image of her smile and sound of her laughter onto his heart, because he knows that soon they’re going to need to wake up and face the reality of the world.

It’s Natasha who finally cracks the fragile walls they’ve built up. Leaning back and resting her head against Clint’s collarbone she asks Coulson, “So, what now?”

“Fury wants me to rebuild SHIELD. From the ground up.”

Clint lets out a low whistle. “That’s going to take a while.”

“I’m counting on it. What about you two?” There it is. The assumption that whatever they do, wherever they go, they’ll be together. Neither of them bother to correct him because he’s not wrong.

“Well it turns out unemployment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Clint jokes.

“All our covers blew,” Natasha says, more seriously. “There’s nothing to go back to.” Raw vulnerability laces her voice as she admits, “I don’t know how to do anything else, Phil.”

“Go back to New York,” Coulson says gently. “You can lay low at Stark’s place for as long as you need to. There’s a place for you guys at SHIELD once it’s up and running again. I’ll keep in touch.”

“Stay here tonight, Phil,” says Clint as Coulson stands. “It’s not like we use both bedrooms.”

 ***

Clint wakes in the middle of the night to empty sheets and Natasha’s silhouette by the window, staring outside at the rain that’s still falling. “Hey,” he says softly. “Come back to bed.”

As she lies down on her side facing him, he can see the quiet resolution in her eyes. It’s the same thing he feels; neither of them knows what’s coming, but they’ll meet it when it does. Together. He takes her hand, bringing it to his lips. Slowly, deliberately, he kisses each one of the scars on her wrist, starting with the oldest ones and finishing with the ones that are still raw, still healing.

Maybe they’ll always be healing. Their scars are proof that nothing ever really goes away. Pain always leaves a ghost, a reminder of what used to be. It fades after a while, becomes weaker, but it lurks there in the background, always waiting for an opportunity to resurface. They feel pain. Of course they feel pain. But they choose to move beyond it, choose to not let their scars define them.

They lie in silence, facing each other. Clint stretches out a hand slowly, resting it on her side. He can feel her heartbeat, slow and steady, through her ribs. He can feel the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. They lie there looking at each other until her eyelids flutter shut and his follow not long after.

 ***

Natasha slips out of bed the next morning while Clint’s still sleeping and pads silently into the kitchen, where Coulson is nursing a mug of coffee, staring out the window at the rain that’s still falling relentlessly. Maybe it’s symbolic, she thinks. Cleansing. Renewal. It’s certainly what they all need. She wishes the rain could flow through her, wipe the guilt and the bloodstains off of her soul.

“Morning,” Coulson greets.

Natasha doesn’t waste time with pleasantries. “I need to show you something.” He nods encouragingly and she takes a step closer, rolling up the sleeves of the oversized flannel she’s wearing (Clint’s) to reveal the scars lining her arms. She points to one of them, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “I almost died that night. I would have bled out on the floor if Clint hadn’t found me. He saved my life for the second time and I hated him for it. But he never showed me anything but kindness, never showed me anything but love. He showed me that I could feel things besides pain, showed me that I didn’t have to hurt myself. When you asked him to look after me, I don’t think you really understood what you were asking. But I want you to know that he did. He always did.”

“Let me tell you something,” Coulson says, pulling out a chair for Natasha to sit down. “Fury sent him on that mission to take you out because he knew Clint wouldn’t follow through. You’re too similar, we knew he’d see himself in you and he wouldn’t be able to let the arrow fly. And we figured…well, I guess we figured that if you put two lost people together, they might be able to find each other.”

“You son of a bitch.” Clint’s voice comes from the doorway. He face cracks into a grin as Coulson looks up at him. “That’s the same thing I said at your grave. Too bad you were too dead to hear me.”

“I should get going,” Coulson says, standing. “I have a top secret organization to rebuild.”

“Stay in touch,” Natasha says quietly.

Coulson smiles the smile that makes Natasha think of home and family. “You haven’t seen the last of me. That’s a promise.” He hugs Natasha gently and then pulls Clint towards him roughly, clapping him on the back like a brother. He’s just about to leave when he turns back briefly, a smile on his face. “I want that Bogotá paperwork on my desk by Friday.”

 ***

It’s like Coulson’s brief visit broke down some kind of wall, and now that can talk about the things that only yesterday seemed too painful to mention. It’s a reminder that there was a life before New York and the fall of SHIELD, a quiet simplicity that hadn’t seemed simple at the time. Clint feels something he hasn’t felt in a long time, something he can’t quite put a word to until Natasha looks at him and he sees the shy smile on her face, the smile that’s always been her trademark when they’re alone together. _Hope_. He feels hope.

Slowly, piece by piece, she tells him the details of her mission with Steve; from realizing that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD to going on the run from HYDRA goons, not knowing who was trying to help them and who was trying to kill them. She tells him about Fury’s death and her subsequent anger, about throwing Jasper Sitwell off the roof of a building, about taking down the helicarriers and blowing all her covers and running for her life, knowing that this time she doesn’t have another face to hide behind. She tells him about going undercover with Steve, about finding unlikely refuge from a stranger when everyone they knew was trying to kill them. “I want you to meet Sam. You’d like him.”

He already likes Sam, Clint thinks. He likes him for keeping Natasha safe when he couldn’t. Despite the fact that she’s the toughest person he knows, despite the fact that he _knows_ she can take care of herself, he’s protective. He has to be. And he breathes a little easier, knowing that she has people to look after her when he’s not around, no matter how much she thinks she doesn’t need to be protected.

Natasha interrupts his silent musing. “What are you thinking about?”

He looks at her with gentle eyes. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Don’t you dare go soft on me, Barton.”

“Too late,” he says, pulling her down on the couch with him and looping an arm over her waist. His breath tickles the back of her neck as he says, “Maybe I’m not going soft. Maybe we just don’t have to hide anymore.”

“Yeah. Everything out the open.”

“Mmmm.” He presses his lips to the back of her neck. “How are you doing with that?”

She sighs, relaxing back into him a little more. “It’s not how I operate. You know that.”

“Maybe Coulson’s right. Maybe we should go back to New York.”

“You think?”

“We can’t stay here forever, Nat. You and I both know that. And we have nowhere else to go. The Avengers…we’re out in the public eye. They think we’re a team.”

“So?”

“So let’s be a team.”

She rolls over so she’s facing him, their faces almost touching. “What if I told you I’m not ready yet?”

“I’ll wait,” he says quietly, smoothing a hand over her hair. “As long as you need.”

“And if I’m never ready?”

“Then I’ll wait forever. I mean it, Nat. I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying unless you kick me out.”

She laughs softly. “I guess I’m stuck with you, huh?”

Clint leans in until their lips are just barely touching and he can feel the warmth of her breath as she exhales. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, Romanoff.”

She smiles against his mouth. “Could be worse.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday morning, everyone! :)  
> Sorry this week's update is so short, I'll try to get something more substantial up next week when I'm not drowning in research papers.
> 
> As always, feedback is greatly appreciated. Enjoy! <3

Clint wakes to Natasha’s hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t know what time it is, but a glance out the window tells him that it’s still dark. Too early. “Nat? Everything okay?”

“Come run with me.”

“’S not even light out yet,” he protests.

She laughs softly and it’s like music. “Come on,” she says, tugging gently on his hand. “I want to show you something.”

“Hate you.”

She laughs again. “You can sleep later.”

The waning moon is still visible over the treeline as they leave the safe house, the morning air cool in the absence of the sun. Natasha breaks into a run as they near the forest and Clint follows her lead. They run in silence with the dark shadows of trees rising protectively over their heads. The path curves slowly upward but neither of them slow their pace. It’s some twenty or thirty minutes before the packed dirt and pine needles turns into rock underfoot and the path curves upward more steeply. Clint can see the sky over the tops of the trees if he looks back, and he understands where Natasha’s taking him. All of a sudden, the forest ends and they’re standing on a brief expanse of rock that overlooks the trees all around them and the rolling hills below. The sky is brighter now, the moon growing dimmer, the last of the night’s stars fading away into darkness.

Natasha sits down, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs in an effort to keep herself warm now that they’ve stopped moving. Clint sits next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She leans into him automatically, and together they wait.

The sun peeks over the horizon slowly, tendrils of light snaking their way through the treetops, flooding the morning sky with shades of pink and orange and yellow. The mountains take on a purple hue as the sky burns with vivid colours so bright that they almost look fake. Natasha leans her head on Clint’s shoulder as she silently watches the horizon.

Clint looks down at her, and suddenly no sunrise has ever seemed less important. The morning sun glints off of her hair, turning it a shade of red that rivals the sky. Her eyes are so impossibly soft, her lips curved up in a small, private smile. He gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze and she turns to look up at him and he could drown in those eyes.

“I love you.” The confession falls from his lips easily. It’s like breathing. The sun rises and the sun sets and he loves her. These are the truths he’ll always know.

She tilts her head upward, kissing him softly. He loves that she lets him see this side of her; the side that drags him up a mountain far too early in the morning because she wants to show him the sunrise. The side that kisses him with a tenderness so uncharacteristic of a spy and a killer.

“I love you,” she says back as their lips part. It’s been too long since she’s said the words, she realizes. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah Nat, I know.”

They sit in silence as the sun slowly washes over them, warming their skin and bathing the world below them in light. The leaves on the trees are just beginning to change colour and the horizon is scattered with hints of red and yellow and orange. The cool September air has a crisp tang to it, a reminder that the last vestiges of summer are slipping away.

As Natasha stares out over the horizon, she thinks about staying. Coulson is the only one who knows their whereabouts and she knows he won’t tell anyone. She imagines the mountains in front of her covered in snow in the quiet stillness of winter and knows she won’t be able to see it because they need to keep moving forward. So she stands and offers Clint her hand but it’s not an ending. It’s a beginning.

 ***

They walk back downhill, hand in hand. “Nat.” Clint says quietly, once the trees are blocking their view of the sky again.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

She doesn’t need to ask what for. She bumps her shoulder into his gently, grinning up at him, and he can’t help the stupid smile that spreads over his own face because he loves seeing her so free and uninhibited and _happy_.

Natasha’s smile fades into curiosity at Clint’s expression. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re happy,” he replies simply. “I like seeing you happy. I wish I could see it more often.”

The corners of her mouth curve up slightly.

“I remember the first time I saw you smile,” Clint continues. “You were sitting across from me in the SHIELLD cafeteria and you hated me and I wanted to help you but I didn’t know how. And then you smiled and I thought maybe, just maybe, everything would be alright.”

Natasha mumbles something incoherent, staring at her feet.

“What was that?”

“I never hated you,” she says quietly. Clint wishes she would look at him. “I wanted to for the longest time, but I never could. I only ever hated myself.”

“When did you stop?”

“SHIELD medical. You told me you loved me and you couldn’t hear yourself say it. And I believed you, Clint. And for the first time in my life, I wanted to look at myself and see what you saw.”

“Natasha.” He pulls her to a stop, cupping her face gently with the hand that isn’t claimed by hers. “Look at me.”

She does. His eyes burn into hers as he lowers his head slowly to kiss her. Just as his lips touch hers, Natasha’s phone buzzes and she jumps back, startled. “Shit,” she says, fumbling in her jacket pocket. “Sorry. Shit.”

She flashes the display at him before raising the phone to her ear. Steve.

“Romanoff.” She’s all business now, the intimacy and vulnerability of moments ago completely forgotten. Clint watches as all the colour drains from her face. He puts a hand on her shoulder to ground her and she leans into him, accepting the support. She looks up at him, raises her eyebrow. A question. He doesn’t know what the question is, but he knows the answer. He nods. She exhales deeply. “We’re on our way.” And then softer, almost a whisper, “Stay safe, Steve.”

“Nat,” Clint says as she hangs up. “You don’t have to-”

She cuts him off. “He’s my ghost too, Clint.”

“Okay,” he nods. “Okay. Let’s go.”

They pack in mere minutes once they’re back at the house, throwing bags into the trunk of the car. Clint takes the keys from Natasha’s hand gently. “I’ll drive.” She doesn’t object.

 ***

“Tell me about him,” Clint says as they drive.

“Who?”

“Barnes.”

“That’s not who he is to me,” she says quietly. “You know who he was. You know what he did.”

“He was brainwashed.”

“We all were. It doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Why did Steve call you?”

She sighs audibly. “He thinks I might be able to get through to him.”

“Do you think you can?”

Natasha looks up at him and he can see the uncertainty in her eyes. “I have to try.”

Clint understands. He understands because it’s the way he felt back when she was his mission instead of his partner. He remembers looking at her too-small unconscious body in a safe house in Warsaw after cauterizing the bullet hole in her shoulder. He remembers running through everything he’d ever been told about her in his mind; _deadly, dangerous, killer_. He remembers looking through that and seeing a scared little girl, remembers thinking that underneath the brainwashing and conditioning and Red Room propaganda, she was just a kid who’d been dealt more than her fair share of pain.

This is the way she sees the Winter Soldier, Clint realizes, despite all the pain he once caused her. She sees him as just another victim of the Red Room’s torture, sees him as someone to be helped. His heart swells with pride as he thinks about how far she’s come since she first joined SHIELD. Natasha, the same Natasha who once stormed out of a coffee shop because she thought he had an ulterior motive, willingly going back to help a man who once broke her beyond repair, hurt her in ways she only ever spoke of once on the floor of a broken-down shack in Kazakhstan with Clint’s arms around her like a shield from everything and everyone that ever hurt her.

He wishes he could hold her now because he can see her coming apart at the seams and he knows she’s not handling this as well as she pretends to be. He has to content himself with holding her hand. She grips his fingers so tightly it hurts. He doesn’t complain, rubbing soothing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb.

Natasha drifts to sleep eventually, her grip on Clint’s hand loosening as her eyelids droop shut with exhaustion. He wonders if she slept at all in the weeks before he found her. They can both survive on next to no sleep, they’ve done it before, but even Natasha has her limits.

He wakes her two hours later at a rest stop on the side of the highway, pressing a cup of coffee into her hand. “Want me to drive?” she asks him.

Clint shakes his head, taking a sip of his own coffee. “I’m good.”

She nods absently, kicking her feet up on the dash and leaning back against the headrest. Clint can feel her eyes on him as he drives and he finds that he likes it, this blatant unapologetic way that she watches him when they’re alone together. He knows that the closer they get to New York and Stark Tower, the higher she’s going to build up her walls until she appears cold and distant and unapproachable because it’s the only way she knows how to protect herself. He understands why she has to do it, but he still hates it. So he reaches out again and squeezes her hand, letting her know that it’s okay if she has to withdraw into herself, but that he’s here. She squeezes back and he knows that she knows, and the soft smile she gives him tells him that this time she’ll rebuild her walls with him on the inside so he doesn’t have to watch her defenses crumble around her and know that he’s powerless to stop it. They have nothing to hide from each other anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late and I suck but it's longer so hopefully the wait was worth it? Is anyone still following this or am I just talking to myself? :P
> 
> (Enjoy. <3 I love you all.)

It’s nearing midnight by the time the lights of Stark Tower come into sight and they’re both exhausted from the drive and their early morning run. Clint wonders if it’s too much to hope that they’ll be able to slip inside quietly without any questions. He groans inwardly when he sees Tony waiting to greet them, knowing that it’s going to be a longer night than he or Natasha had planned for.

“There’s our girl,” Tony says when he sees Natasha. “You’re famous now.”

She grimaces. “Unfortunately.”

Clint places a protective hand on Natasha’s back between her shoulder blades as they follow Tony into the elevator. She leans into the contact and he can see Tony eyeing the two of them out of the corner of his eye. He sees Natasha’s eyes too, the determination in them, the fact that she knows exactly what she’s doing and she doesn’t care if anyone sees.

“Natasha.” It’s the first thing out of Steve’s mouth when the elevator door opens. His voice is laced with relief and concern and something else she can’t quite place. Fear, maybe. He, more than anyone besides herself and Clint, knows that taking down the helicarriers and leaking HYDRA’s secrets for the world to see was only the beginning.

“You found him,” she says flatly, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“He pulled me out of the Potomac,” Steve says softly. “I never told you. But that’s how I knew he was still in there. That’s how I knew that I needed to go after him. If there’s a chance, even the smallest chance that I can get him back…well…I have to hope, you know?”

Natasha’s eyes flick sideways and Clint knows what she’s thinking because he’s thinking the same thing; a dirty fight in the bowels of a SHIELD helicarrier, a sleepless night spent waking each other from nightmares, a broken-down old safe house in Warsaw after the shit storm that was New York. Her hand finds Clint’s and her fingers wrap around his tightly. “I understand,” she tells Steve quietly. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

He nods, and they can all see the exhaustion that floods his features. They’re all having a pretty rough time, Clint realizes, looking around the room at the faces of his teammates. He hadn’t stopped to think about how the fall of SHIELD might affect them, he’d been too concerned with finding Natasha and helping her level out, too concerned with her physical and emotional status once he’d found her. But now, he looks around the room and sees more than one broken spirit and he knows that he and Natasha aren’t the only ones who lost a home, a haven, for lack of a better word.

Steve’s voice is muted when he finally speaks again. “He doesn’t remember me. I thought…if you talked to him…I thought maybe…”

“I’ll try,” Natasha says, cutting him off. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”

They follow Tony back into the elevator and Natasha shoots him a questioning glance as he presses the button for the penthouse. Tony shrugs. “He likes the view.”

His silhouette comes into view when the elevator door opens. He has his back to them as he stares out at the lights that cause the city below them to light up like a beacon, even at midnight. If he hears them enter, he doesn’t care enough to turn.

Before Natasha can take a step forward, Clint’s hand closes around her wrist. She looks back at him, a question in her eyes. He lets go of her wrist so he can sign. _“I’m here. I’m with you.”_

She nods. _“I know.”_

She takes another step forward. “James.”

“Natalia.” His voice isn’t as cold as she remembers. Or maybe it’s wishful thinking.

She steps forward further until she’s standing beside him at the window, a foot or so of distance between them. “The city never sleeps,” she says in Russian.

He answers back in Russian, and the words sound harsh and unforgiving as they fall from his lips. “The city isn’t the only thing that never sleeps.”

She places a hand on the windowsill. “What do you remember?”

“Everything.” His voice is like ice. “And then nothing.” He reaches forward, gripping the windowsill so tightly that his knuckles go white. “I can fight it for a while if I try. The serum. But every time it gets stronger. Less of me comes back every time I resurface.”

She knows. She remembers. Receiving the serum as a child, slipping into that dreamlike state of invincibility, knowing that nothing and no one could hurt her. And then waking up; the pain, the uncertainty, the memories that are still lost and fuzzy no matter how hard she tries to drag them out of the back of her mind. Pieces of her that she’ll never get back. And other pieces that they took away, tainted, twisted. The man beside her played no small part in that. But she sees the tension in his arms and the carefully masked fear in his eyes and she knows that he’s a victim too. And maybe it’s because the man behind her, who she can feel watching her, gave her a second chance she’d done nothing to deserve and taught her how to live, _really_ live, she finds it in her shattered heart to forgive.

“It gets easier,” she whispers. “You can forget. We can help you forget.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to forget. I want to remember.”

“It was a lie, James. Everything they told us. It was all a lie. Forget that and the rest will come. You’ll remember eventually. Not today, not tomorrow. But someday.”

He looks at her then, for the first time, and something like recognition sparks in his eyes. “Tasha.”

She shakes her head sadly. “You don’t get to call me that. Not anymore.”

He turns back to stare out the window and she takes that as her cue to leave. Clint holds her eyes with his as she walks towards him, willing her to show him something, anything, but she stays guarded. Her hand brushes against his lightly but she doesn’t hold on, and he knows what she’s doing because he’s seen it before. She’s showing nothing, because if she doesn’t, she’ll show everything. She’s putting on a mask until she’s somewhere where it’s safe to fall apart. He knows he can’t let her be alone, so he does what he’s done countless times before, what he’s sure he’ll do countless times again. He goes after her.

The elevator doors have almost closed and he runs forward, leaving Tony behind him. “Natasha!”

Clint throws a hand between the doors, stopping them just before they shut. Natasha doesn’t look at him and hammers the button for the tenth floor because they need to get away. Now. Once the elevator doors close completely, she breaks.

She slumps to the floor in a corner, sobs shaking her body, making no effort to hide the tears that are running down her face.

“They can’t see me,” she chokes out when Clint crouches in front of her, the concern in his features overshadowing everything else. “Not like this.”

He doesn’t tell her that if they’re going to live here, if they’re going to be a _team_ , they’re all going to see her break eventually. It’s inevitable. But he’s the only person she’s never had to be strong for, the one who’s seen her at her highest highs and her lowest lows. So he pulls her into his arms and lets her tears soak into his shoulder.

When the elevator stops he stands with Natasha still in his arms, her face pressed into his chest. The living room is (mercifully) empty and Clint carries her down the hall, shouldering a door open at random, breathing a sigh of relief as he shuts and locks it behind them. Natasha takes a deep, shuddering breath as he sets her down gently on the bed. She twists her fingers into the fabric of his shirt and holds on tight. “Don’t go,” she whispers. “Please don’t go.”

As if he ever even considered it.

He lies next to her, so close that their legs are tangled together, their hips touching, their faces inches apart. “Can you sleep?” he asks her.

“I don’t know,” she whispers back.

He places a hand lightly on her side, not missing the way she twitches slightly when he touches her. “Try.”

“You need to sleep, too,” she tells him, because she’s Natasha and of course she’s looking out for _his_ well-being when she’s an emotional wreck. Of course.

Clint winds his fingers into her hair gently, massaging her scalp. She makes a soft noise in the back of her throat and her eyelids flutter shut. He leans in, closing the gap between them, pressing his lips to her forehead. “Sleep,” he murmurs against her skin. “I’ve got you.”

He holds her until her breathing evens out and then he lets his own eyes fall shut as sleep claims him. Maybe it’s the fact that he can feel Natasha in his arms and maybe it’s because he needs to be strong for her and maybe it’s just his bone-deep exhaustion, but he sleeps without nightmares and the next thing he knows, it’s morning.

Clint wakes to find Natasha’s eyes already open, watching him. Her lip quirks up in a small smile when she sees he’s awake.

He grins back because he can’t help it. “What?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “I like watching you sleep.” She says it quietly, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to admit it.

Clint brings his hand to her face slowly, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. His thumb grazes lightly along her cheekbone and she suppresses a shiver as she leans in to kiss him softly.

“Do you think Stark has cameras in here?” she whispers against his mouth.

Clint grimaces. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

 ***

They pad down the hallway together, following the smell of coffee until they’re back in the spacious living-room-type area Tony brought them to last night. Steve’s sitting on the couch with his back to them as he stares out the large floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the city, but he turns when he hears them enter. “Hey guys,” he says softly, pointing at the counter to their left. “Coffee’s over there.”

Clint touches Natasha’s wrist lightly and tilts his head towards the kitchen. She looks pointedly at Steve, and he squeezes her hand briefly before heading over to pour them both coffee.

Natasha approaches Steve slowly. She’s not sure where they stand now, after the fall of SHIELD and finding out that his best friend, presumed dead, had been brainwashed to kill him. All she knows is that with the exception of Clint, Steve is the only one in the tower who’s seen her truly vulnerable and knows her well enough to tell when she’s faking. So she tears off her masks and lets herself be transparent. She owes him that much at least.

She touches Steve’s arm lightly. “Does he remember you?”

He flinches at the contact but doesn’t turn around. “Sometimes. Sometimes he blames me for what happened to him. Sometimes he talks about torture and can’t even remember my name. I can’t decide which hurts less.” Now he turns, the pain visible in his eyes. “Is this how it was for you?”

“I wanted to die,” she says softly. “For the longest time.” She feels Clint’s hand on her shoulder and accepts the coffee he hands her gratefully. He slides his arm around her waist, pulling her close. She doesn’t object.

“What changed?” Steve asks. He looks hopeless and it kills her. She’s always seen him as strong, solid, unwavering.

Natasha tilts her head, looking up at Clint, who’s watching her with soft eyes. She smiles a small, private smile as she tells Steve “I found something worth living for.”

“Do you think he can, too?” Steve tries and fails to mask the desperation in his voice.  
“I think,” Natasha says thoughtfully, “that he already has it. It just might take him time to realize. Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s standing right in front of you when you’re too busy looking backwards.”

Clint pulls her even closer, pressing his lips to her temple. “я тебя люблю,” he whispers, feeling a tremor go through her body as she hears the words spoken in her native tongue.

“Natasha, I-” Steve begins, and then stops, looking down at his hands as if his missing words are written there. “I…just…thank you. Don’t think I don’t understand what this is doing to you. I know these are things you’d rather not remember.”

“I’m okay,” she lies easily. Clint raises an eyebrow and her and she knows that he knows that she’s lying. _“It’s okay,”_ she signs, one-handed. _“I’m okay.”_ He shakes his head slightly, but doesn’t push it.

“He’ll come around,” Clint says, turning to Steve. “It might take a while. It might be a struggle. Just be there. That’s all you can really do.”

Steve sighs and he seems to sink into himself a little as he does it, becoming smaller, more hopeless. “I just…what if he’s not in there anymore? What if what made him Bucky, what made him _human_ , what if that’s gone?”

“It’s not.” Natasha’s voice could cut ice. Clint tightens his hold on her and he can feel the tension running through her body. “The human part of him is still there, still fighting. That’s why he needs you. To remind him that he’s fighting for the right reasons.”

Steve finally turns to look at him, and his eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. “That’s the thing,” he says. “I don’t even know what I’m fighting for anymore.”

Natasha smiles at him sadly. “Well that makes three of us.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is late (again) i suck (again) and please talk to me (again)

Natasha wakes to the touch of cold metal on her arm and suddenly she’s back in the Red Room. She jerks backwards, feeling Clint’s arms tighten around her as her sudden movement wakes him up. Her heart is pounding like she just ran a marathon. Safety and security was all a lie because her nightmares are real and they’re standing in front of her saying “Natalia.”

“Get out,” she orders, her voice ice cold.

“Tash,” Clint says sleepily, reaching for his hearing aids. “Natasha, what’s going on?”

All she wants is to shrink back into Clint but she forces herself to pull away because weakness isn’t an option now. So she meets his gaze dead-on and says “Leave.”

“Natalia, please.” The fear and uncertainty in his voice is what makes her hesitate. It’s something she’s never heard before. She remembers what she said to Steve about him being human under all the brainwashing and serum and torture. She tries to make herself believe it.

“If you need to talk, we can talk,” she says, signing the words for Clint’s benefit and hoping he can see in the dim moonlight coming through the window. “But not here.”

He turns without further comment, leaving them to follow him as he leads the way to the spacious living room at the end of the hallway, stopping in front of the window. Natasha follows cautiously behind him, holding Clint’s hand in a death grip. They stand in silence for what feels like too long and Clint’s about to say something, about to ask what the _fuck_ is going on, when he finally opens his mouth and speaks.

“They’re still looking for me.”

“HYDRA?” Natasha asks in a low voice.

He nods, his back still towards them. “They’ll never stop. Just like they never stopped looking for you. Just like _I_ never stopped looking for you.”

Natasha shivers, wrapping her free arm across her stomach. She says nothing.

“I can’t go back,” he continues. “Not now, not when I’m finally starting to remember.” He turns then, anguish visible in his eyes. “I remember being human.”

Natasha drops Clint’s hand, taking another step forward. She lays her hand on his arm, feels the tension in his muscles. “You are human,” she tells him, her voice impossibly gentle. “You always were.”

He shakes his head, and now he’s the one shrinking away from her. “The things I did, Natalia. The things I did to _you_. That wasn’t human.”

Natasha feels Clint’s hand on her shoulder and she doesn’t need to see his face to know what he’s thinking because New York is at the forefront of her mind too. Tears and sleepless nights and Clint always blaming himself for something that could never have been his fault. The man in front of her, no matter what he’s done, is just another innocent, just another puppet on the strings of something so much greater than himself.

“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of,” Clint says quietly, his hand still steady on Natasha’s shoulder. “But that doesn’t have to define us. We can learn from it and move on.”

He shakes his head again. “This is different. Have you ever hurt someone you loved?”

The silence in the room is tangible as Clint nods his head. “I’m not proud of it,” he whispers. “I hated myself for it. But whoever it is, if they really love you, they’ll forgive.”

The Winter Soldier nods thoughtfully. “I need to talk to Natalia. Alone.”

“No,” Clint says sharply.

“Clint, it’s okay.”

He shakes his head vehemently. “I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“Clint.” She reaches up, cupping his cheek tenderly. “I need you to believe me when I tell you I’m okay. Please.”

 _“I don’t like this,”_ he signs.

_“It’s okay. I’m okay.”_

_“If you need me-“_

She stills his hands with her own. _“You’ll know.”_

“He loves you,” comes the voice from behind Natasha as she watches Clint’s back disappear around the corner.

“I know.”

“Love is for-“

“Don’t say it,” she interrupts, turning to face him. “Don’t ever say those words to me again.”

He shakes his head slowly, as if to say that that’s not what he meant. His voice is quieter, more unsure, when he says “Teach me how to be a child, Natalia.”

She smiles sadly at him. “That’s something you have to teach yourself.”

“I need to leave.”

“James-“

“No. Listen to me. They’re still looking for me. If I stay here, they’ll find me.”

“You’re safe here.”

“But you’re not!” He slams his metal arm down on the windowsill, frustrated. “If I stay here, I’ll bring HYDRA straight to your doorstep. I can’t do that to you, to Steve.”  
“He was your friend,” she says softly.

“He was my mission.”

“I was Clint’s mission. Things change.”

“What changed?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not ready to tell you that story. Not yet.”

“Promise you won’t come after me.”

“I can’t make any promises for anyone else, James. You know that.”

“It’s to keep him safe. It’s the least I can do. I owe him.”

Natasha’s eyes soften as she looks at him, looks through the man she knows to the boy that Steve knew so long ago. “Come back someday, maybe. When you stop keeping score.”

“Maybe,” he says uncertainly.

She presses her lips to his cheek softly, briefly, registering his surprise as she initiates contact with him for the second time. “We’ll be here. Stay safe, James.”

“Goodbye, Natalia.”

She hesitates before making the decision, but once she does, the name falls easily from her lips. “Natasha.”

A smile ghosts across his face for a second, and then it’s gone. “Natasha.”

 ***

“What happened?” Clint asks as soon as she rounds the corner. “I couldn’t hear-”

“Shhhh,” she silences him gently. “It’s okay.”

“Where’s Barnes?”  
“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

She sighs. “I don’t know. Just gone.”

“Natasha-”

“I had to, Clint.” She stops, leaning back against the wall of the hallway, empty but for them. “I had to. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Hey,” he says softly, brushing her hair back from her face. “It’s okay.”

“I wish we never came back,” her voice is so quiet he can barely hear it, even in the silence of the empty hallway.

“We can leave.”

“No,” she says sadly, shaking her head. “We can’t.”

“Maybe after. When this is all over. We can-”

“What is _this_ , Clint? When what’s all over? It’s never going to be over. It’s one thing after another and it’s just going to keep going and it’s never going to stop.”

“Natasha.”

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” She whispers it like a secret.

He hugs her tightly. Natasha buries her face in his shoulder and wills herself not to cry because she’s shed too many tears already. “Do you want out?” he asks her, his breath tickling her ear. “Say the word. We’ll leave and never come back.”

“I can’t make you do that.”

“I go where you go, Nat. If you need to get out of here, we’ll get out of here. The only place I want to be is wherever you are.”

“I’ll be okay,” she says quietly, tilting her face up to look at him. “I’m just tired. Tired of this. Tired of everything.”

“Come on,” he says, releasing her and taking her hand.

Clint leads her to the roof and they sit on the edge like they did so long ago after New York when they read Coulson’s letters and mourned together. There’s no one to mourn this time. Instead they’re mourning a feeling, a simpler life.

“I miss it sometimes,” Natasha says quietly, leaning back against Clint’s chest. “The way things used to be. Is that weird?”

He wraps an arm around her waist. “It’s not weird. You’re allowed to miss what you used to have.”

“I’ve just never looked at my past like this before. As something I want back. But I do, Clint, I want it back. I miss SHIELD, I miss _you_.”

He laughs softly against the back of her neck. “I’m right here, Nat.”  
“Not in the same way. I miss being your partner.”

“We’re still partners, Nat. I’ll always be your partner.”

“Tell me something true.” It feels like years since they’ve played this game and all of a sudden she’s desperate.

Clint’s arms tighten around her as he leans forward to whisper in her ear. “The first time I saw you, I was so angry. Angry at the world, angry at everyone who took you and bent you to their will, broke you until your eyes were empty and you hated the world. And tonight, watching you, I couldn’t believe you were the same bitter, violent girl that I brought to SHIELD all those years ago. I’m so proud of you, Natasha.”

“Thank you,” she whispers.

She falls asleep, eventually, with her back against Clint’s chest and her head resting on his shoulder. He lets her sleep until the sun begins to peek over the horizon and then he tightens his arms around her gently. “Nat.”

“Mmmm?”

“Look.”

They watch the sun rise over the city together. It’s not the same as it was in Vermont, the light glints harshly off of tall skyscrapers and filters through the smoke in the air. It’s not the same because they can’t go back. But maybe, Clint thinks, it’s not about going back. It’s about trying to find the beauty in the present.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My life is 0% together and for that I apologize. I didn't update last week because I was drowning in research papers and studying for my 4 hour certification exam. But I finally got this together and I know it's not Monday and I'm just all over the place and I'm sorry. (I hope this makes up for it.)
> 
> I'll do my best to update again next week (but I'm going to be gone at nationals and then I have finals so I can't promise anything). 
> 
> Sorry I suck so much. Enjoy/thanks for reading/shoutout to all 2 of you who talk to me. <3

Eventually, they realize they’re going to have to face whatever’s waiting for them downstairs. Clint stands, offering a hand to Natasha.

“Let me take the blame for this,” she tells him as they walk hand in hand towards the stairs.

“Nat-”

“It’s my fault, Clint. I deserve whatever I have coming for me.”

“It’s nobody’s fault. You couldn’t have stopped him any more than I could have. Any more than Steve could have.”

“That’s not what they all think.”

“What do they think?”

She shrugs, looking away from him, fixing her eyes on the skyline. “That I’m fearless, maybe.”

He wants to tell her that she’s the bravest person he’s ever met. He wants to tell her that if fearless had a name, it would be Natasha. But fearless isn’t the right word. Natasha feels fears just like him, just like anyone. The difference is that she controls the fear, internalizes it, makes it look like it never existed. So he doesn’t tell her that she’s fearless. Instead, he says “You do a damn good job pretending.”

“Not around you.” It’s the way she says it that gets him. Like a secret she’s not sure if she’s allowed to admit, even though it’s just the two of them on top of this roof and they haven’t kept secrets from each other for years. Like something she has to admit to herself so she knows it’s real. Like a confession.

“Natasha-” he begins, not knowing what he’s going to say but wanting to say _something_.

She shakes her head like she’s shaking herself out of a trance, frowning slightly. “I like that I don’t have to pretend around you.”

“Come on,” he says softly. “Let’s go back downstairs.”

 ***

The second they step out of the elevator they’re confronted by Steve with Bruce trailing behind him, looking anxious. Steve grabs Natasha by the shoulders none too gently, shoving her up against the closed elevator doors.

“Where is he?” he spits out.

Natasha schools her features into a blank mask, ignoring the twinge of pain in her shoulder from the still-healing bullet wound. “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit.”

“Steve,” Bruce speaks up nervously, “maybe this isn’t the best-”

Steve cuts him off, turning back to glare at Natasha. “Don’t lie to me, Natasha. I thought you were above that. Where did he go?”

She grits her teeth as she fights the urge to rip Steve’s hands off of her. “He didn’t say.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“If there’s another option I’m open to your suggestions.”

“Let’s sit down,” Bruce says calmly. “Talk this out. Stop throwing blame until we know who to throw it at. You’re not the only one with problems, Steve.”

Steve sighs deeply, dropping his hands from Natasha’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I just…I don’t understand why he would leave.”

“To keep you safe,” she says gently.

Steve swings a fist at the wall. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“I know,” Natasha says, conscious of Clint’s eyes boring into her back. “I know.”

 ***

“Tell me again.”

They’re crowded around the small kitchen table while Tony messes with an expensive-looking monitor searching for something, _anything_ , that can lead them to Bucky. Clint brushes his hand against Natasha’s knee under the table and she smiles at him softly before turning to Steve. “He told me that he owes you. That he was leaving to keep you safe. He didn’t say where.” _He told me love was for children._

“We have to find him. Before HYDRA does.” Steve tries and fails to keep the panic from lacing his voice.

“Working on it,” comes Tony’s voice from the other side of the kitchen.

“New rule,” says Bruce. “Nobody else runs away.”

_“Alone,”_ Natasha clarifies, signing the words under the table where only Clint can see her hands. _“Nobody else runs away alone.”_ She hasn’t forgotten his words from earlier, hasn’t forgotten him asking her if she wants out. And she does. She aches with how badly she wants to end all of this, run away and stop looking back. The words burn on the tip of her tongue and she swallows them because she knows she could never live with herself if she asked for an out.

“Guys.” It’s Tony.

Steve’s at his side in an instant. “Did you find him?”

“No. But I found someone else who’s looking for him.”

“HYDRA,” Steve breathes. “I have to go.”

“Wait.” Thor stands, looking around the room at each one of them in turn. “I, for one, am not willing to let you go alone.”

“He’s right, buddy,” Tony says, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “We’re a team. It’s time we start acting like one.”

“I’ll…uhhh…I’ll leave in fifteen, I guess. With whoever’s with me.” Steve keeps his gaze fixed on the ground and one by one, they leave the kitchen in uncomfortable silence.

 ***

“Never thought I’d see myself in this thing again,” Natasha says as they pull on their old SHIELD suits. “Feels wrong, almost.”

“Hey,” Clint says softly. “Come here.” She leans into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and tilting her face up to look at him. He brushes her hair back from her face with calloused fingertips. “Just another mission, yeah?”

She shakes her head sadly. “It’s not the same. We’re on our own this time.”

“The team-”

“They have _superpowers_ , Clint. What do we have?”

He presses his lips to her forehead. “We have each other. Hasn’t that always been enough?” He tilts her chin up gently so he can see her face. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

Steve looks up as the exit the elevator on the ground floor, raising his eyebrows slightly in surprise. “I wasn’t sure you guys would come.”

“We’re a team,” Natasha says a little too harshly. “We’re a team.” Gentler this time. “You did the same thing for me.”

“Alright, Cap,” Tony says, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “What’s the game plan?”

“There isn’t one,” Steve says honestly.

“My kind of plan,” Tony replies. “Let’s go.”

 ***

The HYDRA signal leads them to a warehouse that looks like it’s long since been abandoned, the ground around it strewn with debris. “It’s a trap,” Thor says instantly. “We should leave.”

“If they were trying to lure us here they did a damn good job of hiding their signal,” Tony says skeptically.

“I’m going in,” Natasha decides.

Steve looks up at her sharply. “Natasha-”

“I’m going in,” she repeats. Her tone leaves no room for argument.

“Not alone,” says Thor. “We’re coming with you.”

“No. You’re not.”

“Tash-”

“Clint, it doesn’t make sense. If it’s a trap, they’ll be waiting for all of us to go in together. They’ll be expecting it. I know we’re a team, but I have to do this alone.”

“Why you?” Steve asks. “Why not one of us?”

“I’m the last one they’ll expect.” She smirks at him and it makes Clint’s blood run cold because he recognizes her mission face, recognizes the mask she used to wear back when she acted like she had nothing left to lose.

Steve sighs deeply. “I don’t like this, Natasha.”

“You don’t have to.” She taps the communicator in her ear. “I’ll let you know if it’s all clear.”

The silence is palpable as she leaves. Bruce shifts back and forth on his feet uneasily. Steve looks at the ground, the sky, anywhere but the building behind them. Tony glares at each one of them in turn until it becomes clear that nobody’s going to say anything. Clint’s about to ask how long they’re going to wait before they forget about Natasha’s all-clear signal that he _knows_ isn’t coming and go in after her when something explodes behind them.

He turns to see smoke emerging from the top of the warehouse, flames beginning to lick at the sides of the walls. Ignoring the voices in his ear telling him that he can’t just charge headfirst into a burning building, that there _has_ to be some other way, Clint takes off at a run.

His feet pound in time to his heartbeat. _Natasha_. They should have left when Thor suggested. He should never have let her go into the warehouse alone. They should have come up with a better plan, with _any_ other plan. _Natasha_. He should have stopped her when she tried to leave and told her all the things that he was thinking. _You’re not expendable. Stop acting like you have nothing to live for._ There’s only one person he would run straight into a fire for without even thinking about it. It’s only ever been her. _Natasha._

“Natasha!” The smoke claws at his throat and he desperately sucks air into his burning lungs, coughing as he inhales a mouthful of ash. He blinks back tears as the smoke fills his eyes. The flames caress his skin as it gets harder and harder to breathe and he knows that if he doesn’t find Natasha soon, they’re both going to die in here. He takes another deep breath and feels the smoke tear through his lungs. “Natasha,” he coughs weakly. And then, summoning all the energy he can, “Natasha!”

He hears her before he sees her, a small dark mass almost fully concealed by the smoke. She’s curled up in a ball as the fire blazes around her, coughing weakly. “Nat,” he chokes out as he kneels beside her. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

“I can’t,” she whimpers, and he hates how defeated she sounds, hates the fact that she’s given up completely and she’s lying here waiting to die.

“Come on,” he begs. “Please, Nat. You’re not going to die in here.”

“Get out of here, Clint.”

He shakes his head. “Not without you.” He slides an arm under her knees and another under her back and pulls her to his chest as he struggles to his feet. He lurches forward, vision blurred by the smoke, lungs aching, skin burning, the small form of his partner cradled in his arms. “I’ll get you out of here, Nat,” he tells her, more for his benefit than for hers. “I’ll get us out.”

 ***

The rest of the team stands in silence as Clint sprints towards the burning building, shouting his partner’s name. They stand and they wait. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. Minutes that feel like years. The smoke rises steadily form the warehouse as the flames burn higher and higher as if they’re trying to touch the sky.

Clint’s been gone for seven minutes when the building collapses. The roof falls in piece by piece and the flames climb higher and they all stand there, staring, because they don’t know what else to do.

Steve sinks to the ground with his head in his hands. Tony kicks at a chunk of debris angrily, swearing under his breath. Thor stares at the flames solemnly. They’re all thinking the same thing, but no one wants to say it.

“I’m going in,” Bruce says finally.

Tony sighs heavily. “There’s no point. They’re gone, Bruce.”

“No!” Steve shouts, punching the ground. “That’s not how it works.”

“People die, Cap,” Tony tells him.

“Not today.”

 ***

Clint panics as pieces of the roof begin to fall in around him. He pulls Natasha tighter to his chest as if he can somehow shield her from the death and destruction all around them. He thinks about quitting, about sitting down and letting the flames consume them, thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad end after all. But he knows that he owes it to the woman in his arms to keep moving. He stumbles forward blindly, looking for something, _anything_ that might mean a way out. The smoke plays tricks on his eyes, showing him daylight when it isn’t there, showing him an exit where there’s nothing but another wall.

Another part of the roof collapses, narrowly missing his head. The smoke flies upward eagerly, just as desperate for escape as he is. Clint wishes he could fly. Instead, he looks to his left, and sees the hazy outline of a door. He could cry with relief, he thinks, if the smoke wasn’t making every effort to claw his eyes out.

The ceiling continues to fall in behind him as he stumbles towards the doorway, gasping for air. He steps through the doorway and collapses to his knees, looking up at the sky as the fire rages on behind him. “We made it, Nat. We made it.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It appears that regular updates have more or less gone out the window. (I just got back from nationals and now it's finals and days need more than 24 hours for all the shit I need to get done). Anyways, please accept this shitty sorry-I'm-late chapter.
> 
> Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and support. You guys are the best. <3

Steve’s the first one to see them as they emerge from the wreckage. He sprints towards the flaming building as Clint collapses to his knees with Natasha in his arms, coughing weakly. “Clint!” he yells as he runs. “Clint! Natasha!”

“Steve,” Clint chokes out, acutely aware of the burning in his lungs and the lightness in his head. “Help me.”

“I’ve got her,” Steve says, gently lifting Natasha out of Clint’s arms. She stirs feebly, mumbling something unintelligible. “Shhhh. It’s okay, Nat, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“You’re up, Doc,” Tony says to Bruce as Steve rushes towards them with Natasha’s body in his arms, Clint stumbling along behind.

Steve lowers Natasha to the ground gently as Bruce kneels at her side. She’s gone still, too still. Bruce places two fingers at her wrist, feeling for a pulse, before he confirms their suspicions. “She’s not breathing.”

“Medical,” Tony says quickly.

“She’s not _breathing_ , Tony. By the time medical gets here it’ll be too late.”

“Too late?” Clint shouts. “What do you mean, too late? You’re a fucking doctor! _Do_ something!”

“I’ll do everything I can, Clint, I promise you.”

“What if it’s not enough?”

“It will be.” Bruce, calm like he always is in a crisis, begins to strip Natasha’s suit off down to her waist. Clint looks away as he realizes what’s happening, but he can still hear her ribs crack as Bruce begins the compressions. His stomach twists and he sinks to his knees, dry heaving. He hates the fact that she’s lying there dying, no, _dead_ , and he can’t even look at her. His stomach heaves again and he feels a strong hand between his shoulder blades.

“She’ll live,” Thor tells him, although his voice betrays his confidence. “She’s a warrior. You both are.”

“This is all my fault,” Clint moans, covering his face with his hands. He doesn’t want to look any of them in the eye as he admits that he’s responsible for his partner’s death. “I knew what she was doing. I should have gone in after her.”

“She went in to find HYDRA,” Thor says gently.

“It was suicide, Thor. She knew it was a trap."

“Does she wish to die?” Thor asks, and Clint finds himself wondering if there are suicides on Asgard, if those who run headfirst into a burning building to end their own lives are still honoured as fallen warriors.

“I thought she didn’t,” Clint sighs, shaking his head. “I thought that was over. I don’t know what to think now.”

They’re interrupted by a soft choking noise that comes from behind them. Bruce sits back on his heels as Natasha gasps for air. “That’s all I can do for her here,” he says wearily. “We need to get her back to the tower.”

“I’m on it,” says Tony, stepping forward.

“Tony-” Bruce warns.

“I know. Careful.” He lifts Natasha in his arms like she’s made of glass and takes off. Soon he’s a speck flying towards the city skyline in the direction of Stark tower.

“Come on,” Steve says when nobody else moves. “We’re no use here.”

They rush into the tower covered in soot and ash to be met by a worried-looking Pepper. “Seventh floor,” she tells them. They pile in the elevator without a word, Steve pummeling the button that will take them upstairs to Tony and Natasha.

Bruce, familiar with the hospital that Tony’s set up in the tower due to the inevitability of at least one of them getting injured on a mission, takes action instantly. The rest of them stand around Natasha’s bed while Clint sinks into the chair in the corner staring at the burned skin on his hands, the mark that the fire left on him. His vision blurs as tears spring to his eyes unbidden and he lets them fall freely, not caring who sees.

He feels a hand on his shoulder and blinks until Steve’s face comes into focus. “Bruce is doing everything he can, Clint. She’s in good hands.”

He nods, choking back a sob as he says “I need to take a break.”

“Whatever you need,” Steve says gently.

Clint stands, glancing hesitantly over at the table where his partner’s too-still body is lying, surrounded by the rest of the team and a dozen beeping machines he doesn’t understand. “Let me know if…if…”

“I’ll come get you when she wakes up,” Steve says.

He goes to the roof and immediately regrets it. The setting sun is blazing across the sky and the colours look like fire; harsh and unforgiving. He walks to the very edge of the roof, the narrow precipice between standing and falling. He calculates the distance to the ground, wonders how much it would hurt to land from this height, wonders if the impact would be instantaneous. He wonders what the seconds before would feel like. Flying, maybe. Loss of control in a way that’s almost as beautiful as it is deadly. He stands on the edge and thinks about how all it would take is one step, but somehow the one step takes infinitely more courage than running into a burning building.

He shrinks back from the edge of the roof because he’s not Natasha, he doesn’t embrace the fine edge between falling and flying, but it doesn’t make him a coward. Sometimes the choice to live is harder than the choice to die.

 ***

The first breath of air hurts like hell. Natasha glances around disoriented as she attempts to inhale despite the sensation that her chest is being crushed under the weight of a ten-story building. She winces as her body protests the simple action. She recognizes the pain. Broken ribs.

She feels a hand brush her hair back from her forehead but it’s the wrong hand. Too gentle, too smooth, fingertips uncalloused. “How are you feeling?” The voice is wrong too. She tilts her head to the left, wincing as even the small motion sends pain shooting through her body. Steve is sitting in the chair beside her bed, looking concerned. There’s nobody else in the room.

“Clint,” she says automatically. It comes out raspy from the smoke.

“He’s fine. I told him I’d go get him when you woke up.”

“The roof.” Every word is a struggle to get out.

“What?” Steve asks, confused.

Natasha coughs wincing noticeably as her ribs scream in protest. “He’ll be on the roof.”

 ***

“Clint.” He doesn’t turn when he hears Steve’s voice behind him. He’s not sure he wants to know what Steve has to say. He’s been trying to mentally prepare himself for the worst but he knows the worst will still shatter him.

He takes a deep breath, tries to regain his composure. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Natasha,” Steve answers simply.

Clint turns, eyes wide. “Is she…?”

“Alive,” Steve cuts him off. “She’s alive. Is that enough?”

Clint nods, breathless. “Yeah.” He makes for the stairs automatically, Steve on his heels. “Where are the others?”

“With Nat. You’re not the only one who cares about her,” he says when he sees the look on Clint’s face.

“I’m the only one who ran into a burning building to save her.”

Steve sighs heavily. “I know. I should have done something. We all should have done something. We thought…”

He doesn’t need to finish. _We thought she was done for._ Clint knows why none of them followed him into that building. It doesn’t make it any easier. “She’s not expendable, Steve. Not to me.”

“Nobody’s expendable,” Steve says softly. “That’s what makes this job so damn hard.”

Clint nods in agreement because he doesn’t know what else to say, turning to lead the way down the stairs.

Three pairs of eyes zero in on him as he opens the door to Natasha’s room but he ignores them, making his way to the side of the bed, brushing his fingers across her shoulder lightly. “Hey, sweetheart.”

She tilts her head to the side to look at him, rolling her eyes. “Don’t call me that.”

“How are you feeling?” He doesn’t expect an answer and he doesn’t get one. “Look, Natasha-”

She cuts him off. “I can’t do this right now, Clint.”

He doesn’t want to put it off. He needs her to understand that he knows what she was doing when she ran into that building. He needs her to understand that he cares too much to sit back and watch her throw away her life over and over. He needs her to know what it cost him to look at her lifeless body and think that maybe this is when it all ends. But she’s looking at him with eyes full of guilt and sadness and he can’t bring himself to pour more salt in her wounds so he nods. “Okay. Should I go?” He’s dimly aware of the fact that everyone else has vacated the room.

“Stay. Please.”

Clint ignores the chair beside the bed. Instead, he stretches out cautiously on top of the covers, lying beside Natasha but not touching her. He can see some of the tension leave her as she leans into him as best as she can. He curls his body around hers carefully, protectively. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 ***

Steve’s about to re-enter the room when he sees that the two assassins are sleeping, curled around each other in the narrow hospital bed. He stops in the doorway, watching silently.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Bruce asks, leaning against the doorway beside him. “Two of the most deadly people in the world and they look so…”

“Young?” Steve offers. They look like children, curled up in the hospital bed, especially Natasha. Steve realizes he has no idea how old she is, he’s never asked, but she looks barely out of her twenties, maybe younger.

“I think we forget,” Bruce says slowly. “Because of all they’ve been through, all we’ve been through together, we forget that they’re just kids.”

“Kids who never had a childhood,” Steve says sadly.

“I don’t understand,” says Tony, coming up behind them. “Are they together?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Bruce replies. “They’ve been through so much together. When you live a life like that, when you have someone who understands the things that nobody else gets, you hold on to that.”

“Constant.” Clint speaks up from his position on the hospital bed, startling the three men in the doorway who hadn’t realized he was awake.

“Shit, Clint,” Bruce mumbles. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says, brushing his thumb lightly across Natasha’s cheek. “Banner’s right. When you live the kind of life where nothing is certain, you need a constant, a home. Something to come back to. Only sometimes it’s not a place.”

Steve shifts on his feet awkwardly. The moment feels so intimate and he knows he shouldn’t be here, none of them should be here. “Let us know when she wakes up,” he tells Clint, shooting Bruce and Tony a knowing look.

“Yeah,” Clint says quietly, thinking back to what Steve said to him on the roof. _You’re not the only one who cares about her_. They’re a team now, whether he likes it or not, and he thinks maybe it’s time they start acting like it. “Yeah, I will.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M THE WORST. And I'm afraid this may be the last you see of me for a couple weeks because I'll be backpacking through the UK wreaking havoc with no time to write. So expect the next update in a couple of weeks. Sorry again for sucking, and a major thank you to those of you who are still sticking with me. <3

“We need to talk,” Clint says when she wakes up. He knows it’s harsh, but so is suicide, so is running into a burning building and trying to leave him behind among the living. He’s never given much thought to what would happen if Natasha died, he can barely stand to think about it, but deep down he knows that he’d be following not long after her. He hates it, hates that he can’t stomach the thought of a life without her, but she’s given him more cause to live in the past five years than he’s had his entire life.

She immerses herself in a scrutinous observation of her fingernails in order to avoid his gaze.

“Natasha?”

“I know.” She exhales deeply, knows she can’t avoid the conversation any longer.

Clint, to his credit, gets straight to the point. “When are you going to stop trying to get yourself killed?”

“I’m just tired, Clint. I’m so tired.”

 He wants to tell her she’s being selfish, wants to ask her if she understands the impact her death would have on the team, on _him._ But he can’t because he knows that she knows. Underneath the hurt and the pain and the desire for an out so desperate that even death seems like a sweet release, he knows that they each have one thing they can’t bear to lose. Each other.

“I was so scared,” he whispers.

“Clint-”

“I was terrified, Natasha. Watching that building go up in flames, knowing you were in there, carrying your body out only to realize that you _weren’t breathing_. You have no idea what that’s like.”

“I’m sorry.”

He drops his head into his hands, exhaling deeply. “What were you thinking?”

“Do you really want to know?”  
Does he? Of course. Of course he does. “Natasha.”

“I was looking at the fire, wondering how long it would take for it to consume me. Wondering if it would hurt. Wondering if I could stomach the pain, or if it would be worse than the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Wondering if I’m stronger than the thing with the power to destroy me.”

“And are you? Stronger?” Five years of partnership, of friendship, of intimacy, and she’s still a mystery to him. Predictable in the most unpredictable way.

She shakes her head, and when her eyes meet his she doesn’t hide, doesn’t shy away. She’s open with him, raw, honest, and the pain she carries is enough to hurt him too. “I’ve never been strong.”

“You’re the strongest person I know.”

She lifts her gaze to the doorway that Steve, Bruce, and Tony were observing from not long ago. “Do they hate me?”

“They want to see you.”

“They can’t see me, Clint. Not like this. Not after-”

“Natasha.” He places a palm on her cheek, turning her head gently so she’s looking at him instead of the door. “Hey. Everyone knows how tough you are, but you don’t have to pretend to be untouchable. We’re a team.”

“I guess I’m going to have to get used to this, huh?”

He squeezes her hand, smiling softly at her. “I’ll go tell them you’re awake.”

Clint doesn’t have to go far, it turns out. The entire team is congregated just around the corner when he leaves Natasha’s room. Steve takes a step towards him. “How’s she doing?”

“Alright,” Clint says, because he doesn’t want to go into detail.

Steve nods, understanding. “Can we see her?”

Tony’s the first one into the room. “What the hell were you thinking, Romanoff?” he asks loudly.

Natasha flinches. “I wasn’t.”

Tony sighs dramatically. “You’re lucky Banner was there to give you the kiss of life.”

Natasha shoots an amused look at Clint. He rolls his eyes back at her. _“Sorry.”_

_“Asshole.”_

“CPR,” Bruce mumbles, embarrassed. “It’s called CPR, Tony.”

“Hey!” Tony exclaims as he watches Clint and Natasha signing back and forth. “No secret languages in my tower!”

“It’s sign language, Tony,” Clint says, grinning.  
“For what purpose?” Thor inquires.

“I’m deaf.”

“You’re _what?_ ” It’s Natasha’s turn to smile as Tony jumps out of his seat to examine Clint’s hearing aids. “Where did you get these?”

“SHIELD-issued. I went deaf from a blast on a mission.” He doesn’t talk about details, doesn’t talk about how Natasha went in alone that time too, because it makes everything feel too real, brings back things he doesn’t necessarily want to remember. He hates that the feeling of wondering if he’ll ever see her again has become too familiar. He looks away from his partner, a lump in his throat.

“Barton,” Tony says seriously, oblivious to where Clint’s mind has gone. “This technology is remarkably inferior. I can make you something better with two hours in the lab. Right, Bruce?”

“I appreciate it, Stark, but I’d rather my hearing aids didn’t explode in my ears during a mission.”

Tony sighs dramatically again. “ _Such_ little faith.”

“I heard from Sam,” Steve says quietly, slipping into the seat besides Natasha’s bed as Tony pesters Clint about the benefits of Stark-enhanced hearing aids while Bruce looks on with interest.

She raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Trail went cold somewhere in Jersey. We have no idea where he could be. He might be halfway across the world. He might still be on the east coast.”

Natasha rests a hand on his arm lightly. “We’ll find him, Steve.”

He exhales heavily, resting his elbows on his knees. He looks defeated, Natasha thinks, and she finally understands what Clint meant when he told her that they don’t have to act strong in front of each other because this man whom she’s always seen as unbreakable is just as weak as her, just as weak as the rest of them. No, not weak. That’s the wrong word. _Human_.

“We keep saying we’ll find him,” Steve says. “We _did_ find him. And then he ran away without an explanation, but he _knows_ me, Natasha. I know he does.”

“He’s trying to protect you, Steve.”  
“It’s too late for him to try to keep me out of this. I’m already in it.”

_We’re a team_. She can hear Clint’s voice in her mind. So when she opens her mouth, her secrets come out. “The serum instills one emotion. Fear. It overloads your senses until fear is all you know, all you’ve ever known. The only way to stop it is to learn to fight it, learn to overcome it, make yourself stronger than it. But sometimes your fear gets the best of you and you can’t fight it and you need to run away, even from the people who care about you.” She stops speaking when she realized that all conversation in the room has ceased and they’re all staring at her, all looking at her like she’s a new person. Except for Clint. He’s looking at her like she’s the same person he’s always known, so it’s his eyes she stares back into.

“Natasha…” Bruce starts, and then trails off, staring at the ground.

“At the risk of sounding sappy, Romanoff, you don’t have to run away from us anymore,” Tony says. “We’re a team. We’ve seen each other at our bests and our worsts and we stick together because that’s what teammates do. Think about that the next time you try to run into a burning building alone.”

Natasha’s lips quirk up slightly at Tony’s blunt honesty. “Noted.”

Tony nods decisively, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Alright, freeloaders. What should I order for dinner?”

They end up eating pizza in Natasha’s room because Bruce still won’t let her leave, despite her insistences that she’s fine, she’s had much worse injuries than just a couple burns, and she’s feeling much better already. Tony tips the wide-eyed delivery boy with a stack of cash equivalent to three times the price of the pizzas he just delivered and he stammers his thanks before stumbling out of the room, the look on his face a mixture of terror and awe.

Clint laughs. “You don’t have to be so intimidating, Stark.”

“Me? Intimidating?” Tony asks indignantly. “I think he was more scared of Thor.”

“Intimidation is never my intention,” Thor tells them.

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t _mean_ to intimidate anyone but it’s inevitable whenever you’re swinging the hammer of doom around like it weighs less than a feather.”

“It’s quite light, really.”  
“Whatever, hotshot.”

They talk and they eat and they laugh as they recount stories and Natasha realizes that being with these people, just like being with Clint, is easy. They accept her silence as an answer and they don’t push too hard and they don’t ask for anything she’s not willing to give. _We’re a team_ , Clint had said, and when she looks around the room at the five people she’s come to call her friends, she knows that that’s exactly what they are. A team.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm literally the worst. I'm SO sorry it took me so long to update. (You can blame a combination of writer's block and backpacking around Europe.) Thank you SO much to everyone who's been leaving comments and encouragement, you guys are so sweet and I love you all endlessly. Thank you so much for not giving up on me despite the increasingly sporadic updates. <3

The window opens silently. Natasha’s not surprised. He taught her everything she knows about stealth and silence, after all. Clint’s curled around her in the narrow hospital-style bed, despite her insistence that he go back to his room and actually get some decent sleep. “I sleep better with you,” he’d said, and she hadn’t questioned it because she wants him to stay, even if it means sacrificing quality of sleep.

She wraps a hand around Clint’s wrist, gripping it tightly. His eyes fly open instantly, wide and alert as he meets Natasha’s gaze. She tilts her head toward the window and he nods, understanding.

“You need to stop doing this,” she says as a dark shadow slips through the window and lands silently on the floor, catlike. It’s disconcerting, the way he can move without making a single sound. _Become the silence_ , she remembers him telling her. _Let the silence become you_.

She realizes, as the moonlight filtering through the window outlines his body, that he’s shaking. It brings back memories, fuzzy and rough and blurred around the edges. She doesn’t know where one ends and the other begins. All she remembers is the pain, dizziness, confusion; lying curled up in a ball in the shadows of a narrow alley and willing death to come for her. Standing in a hotel room in Warsaw, staring into the eyes of an enemy archer, longing for his arrow to pierce her heart and end it all. Years of waking in a cold sweat from nightmares that felt a little too real, from a past that isn’t quite distant enough for comfort. Yes, she knows what it’s like.

_“It’s okay,”_ she signs to Clint, hoping he can see her hands in the dark room. She slips out of bed and makes her way towards the window. He watches her cautiously as she approaches, stiffening as she wraps her arms around his waist. At first she thinks she made a mistake, that his training will kick in and tell him to attack her, but then she feels all the tension leave his body at once. He leans into her heavily, breath coming in rough and ragged gasps.

She remembers the Russian lullaby they used to sing in stolen moments, moments where, if they forgot about the Room and the training and the red in their ledgers, they could almost be normal people. Their small act of defiance. The words roll off of her tongue as easily as they always did and she sings softly of cold winters and dark nights and a fire that guides the wanderers back home.

“It hurts,” he chokes out once Natasha’s song trails off into silence. “My head, it hurts.”

_Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?_ “I know,” she whispers. His shaking subsides and Natasha steps back, giving them both space.

He stares at his feet. “I told you not to come after me.”

“And I told you I couldn’t make promises for anyone else.”

“But you’re the one who was hurt,” he says, gesturing to the bandages that still cover the worst of Natasha’s burns. “I told you not to come after me,” he says again.

“You know, Barnes,” Clint speaks up from the bed, “if you really know her, you should know that she does what she wants.”

Natasha glares in Clint’s direction before turning back to look at the man by the window. “Why did you come here?”

“There’s nowhere else to go.”

Natasha doesn’t understand. “The last time we spoke, you said you were leaving to keep us safe. What changed?”

“You’re never safe. As soon as I realized that, I came back.”

“How do we know you’re stable?” Clint asks. “How do we know you’re not going to snap one day and kill us all in our sleep?”

“You don’t,” Bucky says slowly. “You’re going to have to trust me. But,” he continues, glancing pointedly at Natasha, “isn’t that something you’ve had to do before?”

Clint wants to tell him that it’s different, that he never trusted Natasha simply because she _asked_ him to, that trust has to be earned and not freely given. But then he remembers staring into empty, haunted eyes and lowering his bow despite his orders. He remembers her sitting across from him on a rooftop in Afghanistan saying _you shouldn’t trust me_ , remembers trusting her despite that, remembers trusting her implicitly, unapologetically, despite the warnings from her and everyone else telling him that he shouldn’t. He tries to think of a time when he didn’t trust her and realizes that he can’t. _It’s different_ , he wants to say, but he knows that it’s not.

But at the same time, he doesn’t trust blindly. He doesn’t trust easily. He trusted Natasha in that moment because he saw himself in her but he’s never seen himself in the man who climbed through a window uninvited and asked for his trust. The only thing he knows about this man is the _pain_ he’s caused; the haunted look in Natasha’s eyes when she talks about her past, the way she used to flinch away from any man who tried to touch her, the sorrow in Steve’s voice as he talks about the loss of a friend.

“Natasha,” Clint says softly. She turns at the sound of his voice and he switches to sign language so he doesn’t feel as bad talking about Bucky in front of Bucky. _“Do you trust him?”_

She considers it for a moment and he can tell she’s weighing the decision in her mind. “Yes,” she finally says out loud. “I do.”

Clint sighs heavily, running a hand through his sleep-ruffled hair. “Okay. I trust you.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow in a gesture that’s so _Natasha_ and Clint wonders how he never picked up on the similarities between the two before. “You trust me. Just like that?”

He nods once. “Nat trusts you.”

“I’m going to get Steve,” Natasha says. “You two try not to kill each other while I’m gone.”

“No promises,” Clint says, grinning up at her.

“Behave, Barton.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The lock on Steve’s door yields to her easily and Natasha slips into his room silently. He looks young and innocent in his sleep, his face calm and serene, and she feels a pang of jealousy at the ease with which he sleeps when most nights still find her and Clint plagued by nightmares. The jealousy passes as soon as it comes, however. Natasha knows that Steve has more than enough nightmares of his own.  
“Rogers,” she says softly. He doesn’t move. “Steve,” louder this time. Still nothing. “God, Rogers, what kind of soldier _are_ you?” She steps up beside him and places a hand on his bare shoulder, shaking him roughly. “Get your ass out of bed, Rogers.”

Steve’s eyes blink open, bleary at first and then more alert once he registers her presence. “Nat? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just need you to come with me.”

“Are you okay?” he asks, pulling on a shirt. “Is Clint…?”

“We’re fine, Steve. Everything’s fine. Trust me?” It’s a question. It’s still a question with all of them, with everyone but Clint, because she knows she hasn’t given them enough cause to trust her.

He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

The whole night is about trust, Natasha thinks, as she leads the way out of Steve’s room. She can only hope that it’s trust well-placed.

“Took you long enough,” Clint remarks as Natasha re-enters the room with Steve trailing behind her.

“Grandpa over here sleeps like the dead,” she replies. “Who knew?”

“I could have told you that,” Bucky supplies.

Steve freezes. The look on his face says that he so badly wants to believe what he’s seeing but he knows it can’t be true. Bucky’s gone. Bucky’s unstable. Bucky’s certainly not standing in front of him with something that looks almost like a smile on his face. “Buck?” he breathes, trying to conceal the hope in his voice.

“Hey, Stevie.”

“Holy shit,” Steve says. “It’s really you.” And then they’re both laughing as they embrace roughly, Bucky reaching up to ruffle Steve’s hair playfully.

There’s a small smile playing on Natasha’s lips as she watches them. Clint touches her elbow lightly to get her attention. _“Will this last?”_ he asks her when she looks over at him.

She shrugs. _“Maybe. Maybe not.”_

“You must be exhausted,” Steve says to Bucky. “You can sleep-”

“I can sleep in a room with a door that locks from the outside,” Bucky says, cutting him off. “I’m still dangerous, Steve.”

“You’re not-”

“What _if_ , Steve? What if I snap and kill someone? What if I snap and kill everyone? I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to take that risk.”

“Natasha,” Steve says sharply. “It’s over, right? He snapped out of it. It’s over.”  
Natasha’s hands jump to her wrists, wrists that Clint knows are lined with scars under the hoodie she’s wearing. Her face is carefully blank as she tells them, “It’s not that simple. The duration of the effects of the serum depends on the individual. For some it’s longer, for some it’s shorter. But you’re never fully free. It can come back years later, maybe decades. No one’s survived long enough to know.”  
“What about for you? Is it over for you?”  
She flinches slightly, a small enough movement that Steve doesn’t notice. He’s never asked her anything this personal before, never asked her for anything she’s not willing to give. She tells herself that it’s not like that; he’s worried about Bucky, he doesn’t know what his question does to her. Clint’s hand on her shoulder is the only thing that grounds her as she whispers “It’s never over for me.”

Steve realizes his mistake immediately. “Shit, Natasha, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s okay.”

An uncomfortable silence settles around them until Clint clears his throat loudly. “As much as I hate to kick you guys out, it _is_ three in the morning.”

“Right,” Steve says, standing up decisively. He looks back at Bucky. “I’m still not going to treat you like a prisoner.”

“I’m not asking you to handcuff me to the bed, Steve, I’m just telling you to put me somewhere where I won’t hurt anyone.”

Natasha flinches visibly this time. Thankfully, Steve and Bucky know better than to ask, and Clint knows to wait. “C’mon, Buck,” Steve says, leading his friend out of the room. There’s something new in his voice, a childlike excitement that neither of them have heard before, and Clint wonders at the difference. He holds his breath, exhaling only when the door’s fallen shut behind Bucky and he and Natasha are alone in the room again.

She doesn’t look at him. Her face his a shadowed mask, her eyes distant as she stares out the window like the night will show her what she’s looking for. Clint moves to stand beside her, holding out his hand, an anchor if she’s willing to take it.

She does.

Natasha presses herself up against his side and he wraps his arms around her. “Can you sleep?” he murmurs into her hair. She nods against his chest. He pulls her tighter for a few seconds before letting her go, making his way back towards the bed. Clint lies down on the narrow bed, rolling his head to the side to see Natasha still standing in the middle of the room, looking lost.

“Nat?”

“They used to handcuff us to our beds in the Red Room,” she says in a low voice. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“Come to bed, Nat,” he says in a soft voice. “Please.”

 She lies down on her side, facing him. “I understand now.”

“Understand what?”

“Warsaw. Why you gave me a second chance. What it’s like to look into the eyes of someone you used to be.”

“Natasha.”

“Clint.”

“Tell me something true,” he whispers against her forehead. Because their old game is comforting. Because he’s nostalgic, damn it. Because he wishes so badly that things could go back to the way they used to be but knows that, for better or for worse, they can’t.

“I believe in second chances.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's apparently possible for me to not take a month to update. Thank you SO much to everyone who's been reading and leaving sweet comments and sending me encouragement on tumblr. You guys are amazing and I don't deserve you. <3

“I’m discharging you.”

“What?” Natasha says sarcastically. “You mean I don’t need constant medical supervision anymore?”

“You’re technically always under constant medical supervision,” Bruce sighs, exasperated. “Seeing as I’m a _doctor_ and I _live here_. But considering you’re feeling up to wandering around the tower at obscene hours of the morning, I don’t think you need to stay in Tony’s sorry excuse for a hospital wing anymore.”

“How did you-”

“JARVIS.”

“Oh, thank God,” Clint says. “For a second I thought you were going to tell me that Tony has cameras everywhere.”

“He does.”

“Everywhere?”

Bruce grins. “I disabled the one in your bedroom. He doesn’t seem to have noticed. Yet.”

Clint claps Bruce on the shoulder. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“I do what I can.”

 ***

“Come on.”

“You still haven’t told me where we’re going, Barton.”

“It’s a surprise,” he says, holding out his hand, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Come? Please?”

She sighs but there’s a soft smile playing on her lips. “Fine.”

“You love me.”

“I know.”

“Walk or drive?” Clint asks her once they’re outside the tower.

“Walk,” Natasha says decisively. “We have time.” It feels like too long since they’ve spent time alone away from the tower. She laces her fingers firmly through Clint’s, letting him take the lead as they start walking in the direction of the old SHIELD base. She wonders if it’s still there. Wonders if it was left unaltered, or if it’s been torn apart and searched by government officials, every secret laid bare for the world to see. Just like hers. She tries not to care because what’s done is done and caring won’t change anything.

They walk in silence. It’s comfortable, like it always is. Clint has to know that her mind is reeling, he knows her too well to not sense it, but he doesn’t ask. He also knows her well enough to know that she’ll bring it up when she’s ready because the first rule they ever made was that they weren’t going to lie to each other.

Natasha’s suspicions about where they’re going are confirmed as Clint leads her through the park. The leaves on the trees are just beginning to change colour and nostalgia hits her like a bullet with enough force to send her reeling. A lump forms in her throat inexplicably and she swallows around it.

“When’s the last time we came here?” she asks Clint as he opens the door for her and they walk back into their old coffee shop.

“Before the battle of New York, I think,” he says carefully. Despite their unconditional trust, despite the fact that they know each other inside out, New York is still one of those things they don’t really talk about. “Sit. I’ll get us coffee.”

Natasha takes a seat at a table in the corner that offers a complete view of the café despite being half-obscured by a bookshelf. Old habits die hard, after all, and her desire to live life on the periphery, to see and not be seen, is one of them.

Clint places a mug in front of her before sliding into the chair on the other side of the small table. “Happy anniversary.”

She raises an eyebrow delicately. “Anniversary?”

“Yeah.” Clint ducks his head, a slight flush creeping up his face. “You joined SHIELD. Six years ago today.”

“You remember?”

“Nat, how could I forget?”

“I was thinking about SHIELD,” she says quietly, wrapping her hands around her mug to soak up the warmth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. About how I miss it. About how I can’t seem to let go. And I was wondering what’s wrong with me.”

“Nat-”

She shakes her head, continuing. “I realized that maybe the things that define us, the things that are a part of us, the things we _love_ , maybe they never really leave us. And maybe it’s okay to mourn the loss of something or some _one_ that made you who you are.”

Clint freezes with his coffee halfway to his lips. A soft laugh escapes him as he shakes his head in disbelief. “You’ll never stop surprising me, you know that?”

She smiles, the small, shy smile that lights up her eyes. The smile that she only ever shares with him. “I like that you let yourself be surprised.”

“If someone had told me six years ago that I’d be sitting here with you having this conversation, I would have admitted myself to a psych ward.”

“We can still admit you to the psych ward. It’s not too late.”

“Not my point, Romanoff.”

“I know,” she says, softer. “If someone had told me that one day I’d find someone I trust with my life, trust more than I trust myself…” she doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. They both know.

“We got Barnes back,” Clint says.

“Yeah.”

“We did what we came here to do.”

Natasha’s eyes meet his. “Are you saying we should leave?”

“I’m asking if there’s any reason for us to stay.”

As if on cue, both of their phones buzz. Clint pulls his out of his pocket, raising an eyebrow when he sees the name on the display. “Stark.”

Natasha glances at her own phone, which also displays a message from Tony. The message, sent to undisclosed recipients, reads ‘team meeting’. “Trust Stark to ruin our date.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” Clint asks playfully.

“Not anymore,” she sighs.

He flashes her the shit-eating grin that could drop her to her knees in the middle of a battle. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

“You’d better.”

“Should we call a cab?”

Natasha shakes her head, a mischievous smile on her face. “Let’s walk. Stark can wait.”

 ***

“Took you long enough,” Tony complains as they walk into the lab half an hour later.

“I was on a date,” Natasha says smoothly. “You interrupted.”

“Uh huh. What’s your excuse, Birdboy?”

“I was on a date,” Clint says, looping an arm around Natasha’s waist. “You interrupted.”

“You two make me sick. Sit down.”

“Are you going to tell us why you called a team meeting?” Bruce asks as Clint and Natasha slide into seats beside each other. “Or do we have to figure that out for ourselves?”

“Cap called the meeting,” Tony says. “ _I_ volunteered to text everyone because his ineptitude for technology-”

“I know how to work a _cell phone_ , Tony.” Steve interrupts.

“You spent eight minutes trying to figure out how to send a group text. I took pity on you.”

“The point of the meeting?” Thor presses.

“Right,” Steve says firmly. “First of all, unless there are any objections, I’d like to invite Sam and Bucky to join the team.” He glances at the two men seated to his left. “They’ve both proven themselves on multiple occasions and we could really use their help with, well, I guess that brings me to my second point. HYDRA’s still out there and SHIELD’s gone underground which means if someone’s going to take them out, it’s got to be us. I’ll fight until HYDRA’s gone or until my last breath, whichever one comes first. I just need to know who’s with me.”

Sam claps Steve on the shoulder. “I’m with you, brother.” Across the table, Bruce and Thor nod their agreement.

“There aren’t many men I’d willingly follow into battle,” Tony says. “But you’re one of them, Cap.”

Natasha laces her fingers through Clint’s and places their joined hands on the table. “Count us in.”

“I’m with you ‘till the end of the line, Steve,” Bucky murmurs. “You know that.”

“Thank you,” Steve says softly. “All of you. And our third order of business…Buck, you should probably take it from here.”

Bucky glares at the table as he says, “The government wants to put me on trial.”

Thor slams a hand on the table angrily, causing Bruce to jump. Natasha’s eyes go dark. Clint grips her hand tighter.

“No,” says Tony, shaking his head. “No. That’s not right.”

“I’ve hurt a lot of people,” Bucky says, still staring at the table. “I’m guilty.”

“Put HYDRA on trial,” Clint says, his voice cold. “Put the KGB on trial. Put the Red Room on trial. Not their victims.”

“Stay here,” Tony addresses Bucky. “We can hide you. They can’t put you on trial if you don’t let them.”

“You can’t hide me forever. None of you can. And if I stay here, if I can’t ever leave the tower, I might as well be a prisoner. I have to do this.”

“I’ll testify,” Natasha says quietly.

“No offense, Romanoff,” says Tony, “but your testimony isn’t going to hold a lot of weight.”

She lifts her shirt, pointing to the scar on her hip. “Odessa.” She pulls the neck of the shirt aside, baring her shoulder so they can see the lumpy scar tissue that marks the entry of another bullet. “DC. Two times he’s put a bullet in me. I have every right to press charges.” Bucky finally lifts his gaze from the table and his eyes meet Natasha’s. “And I’m not going to.”

“HYDRA won’t see it coming,” Bucky says. “They’ll be expecting me to run, to hide. And instead I’ll stand up in front of the world and expose them for who they really are.”

“And if you’re found guilty?” Tony asks.

“We’ll deal with that when it comes.”

Clint squeezes Natasha’s hand. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks her quietly when she tilts her head to look at him.

She nods firmly. The determination in her eyes is something he’s seen hundreds of times before. “I’m sure.”

As Tony drags Bruce away to get his opinion on armor modifications, Bucky approaches Natasha. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to-”

“I don’t feel like I have to do anything. If it were me on trial, I’d want someone to stand up for me. To tell them that it’s the Red Room who were the monsters, that we were just victims.”

“You know I would,” he says with conviction, and she believes him.

“I know.”

“I never apologized for Odessa.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“I know. I’m still sorry.”

Natasha gives him one of her almost-smiles. “Just don’t shoot me again. Hurts like a bitch.”

“You still owe me a date,” she tells Clint quietly as Tony begins educating Bucky on the benefits of a new Stark-made prosthetic.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he says, sliding an arm around her waist. “We haven’t had a movie night in a while. What do you think?”

“Team movie night!” Tony pipes up from across the lab. “I like the way you think, Barton.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” Clint mumbles in Natasha’s ear. He can feel her silent laughter against him.

They end up watching Star Wars because Tony thinks it’s a tragedy that Steve’s never seen them, and nobody else cares enough to try to argue with Tony. Natasha ends up falling asleep with her head in Clint’s lap and he plays with her hair absent-mindedly, letting the soft red curls slip through his fingers. He likes that she lets herself be like this with him when the others are around, likes the fact that these people, at least, she doesn’t want to hide from.

Bucky leans against the arm of the couch as the credits roll across the screen and Tony starts pestering Steve for his opinion. “I’m glad she has you,” he tells Clint quietly.

There’s a wistful look in his eyes as he looks down at Natasha’s sleeping face, and Clint thinks he might understand. “Did you love her?” It’s an open question; there’s no hostility in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says haltingly. “I think maybe I did, underneath it all. Everything’s in fragments, it’s so hard to remember. There are still times I can’t remember my own name.”

“And now?” Clint gazes down at the woman he still can’t believe is his, even after all these years.

“I want her to be happy.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot twist: I'm still alive and haven't abandoned this story. (Although if you don't hear from me for two consecutive weeks, you can basically conclude that MCATs have destroyed me.)  
> I'd like to thank my law-student cousin for explaining to me how things work in a courtroom and then politely facepalming while I disregarded everything he said in order to increase dramatic effect.  
> Sorry this chapter is so short, I know I'm the worst.   
> Thanks for sticking with my incompetent ass. <3

“Natasha!” She pauses with her hand on the door to the courtroom, turning to see Clint running towards her, Bruce and Tony trailing in his wake. Clint takes both of her hands in his own when he reaches her. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Clint,” she says in a low voice, aware of Tony staring at them curiously and Bruce watching hesitantly, like he’s not sure he wants to know what they’re talking about. “What if it was me in there on trial and the one person who knew the truth refused to testify?”

He pulls her closer, wrapping an arm around her waist, resting his forehead against hers. It’s far too intimate of a position for the setting they’re in; they’re far too exposed and Natasha can _feel_ Bruce and Tony watching them but she can’t bring herself to care.

Clint’s breath ghosts across her eyelids. “Just be sure that this is what you want. You know you can’t go back from this.”

She shuts her eyes briefly, allowing herself to revel in the proximity of him before she pulls away. “I know.”

Tony claps her on the shoulder roughly. “Give ‘em hell, Red.”

“We’ll be in there the whole time,” Bruce says quietly. “Don’t talk to the judge, don’t talk to the audience. Just talk to us.”

“Thank you,” she whispers around the lump in her throat. She hates that she’s getting choked up over nothing but sentimental words. All of a sudden she’s nervous that she’ll lose it in the courtroom, that she’ll break down the way she does when she wakes from the Red Room nightmares that still plague her.

As if he can read her mind, Clint reaches out and squeezes her hand briefly, offering her a small smile. His touch is all the reassurance she needs. Throwing up walls of steel around her heart, Natasha turns and steps into the courtroom.

 ***

“State your name for the court.”

She swallows hard. “Natalia Romanova.”

“But you go by Natasha Romanoff.”

“Correct.”

“Agent of the covert organization formerly known as SHIELD.”

“Correct.”

“Agent Romanoff, do you swear to tell the truth, in its entirety, to the best of your knowledge and ability?”

It takes her seconds to find Clint’s eyes among the crowd in the room. _I feel like we could make this a lot easier if we agreed not to lie to each other_. She’s a liar and a manipulator by nature because it’s her job, because it’s always been the way for her to survive, but Clint’s eyes have always been able to draw truth from her like nothing else can. His eyes are the only thing she sees as she says, “I swear.”

“Agent Romanoff, what are the specifics of your relationship with the defendant?”

“We were…acquaintances in the Red Room,” she says delicately.

“What is the Red Room?”

“A Russian organization that trained young girls as assassins. I was recruited for the Black Widow program. Barnes was one of my trainers.”

“Trained you to do what?”

“Trained us to kill,” Natasha says bluntly. “To lie, to manipulate, to seduce.”

“Were the recruits volunteers, Agent Romanoff?”

She laughs humourlessly. “It was obey or die. Call that a choice if you will.”

“During your time with the Red Room, were you ever a victim of any non-consensual acts that involved your trainers?”

Natasha swallows hard and her eyes find Clint’s again. His gaze, fixed on her intently, hasn’t wavered once. “Yes.”

“Did any of those acts involve the defendant, James Buchanan Barnes?”

For the first time, Natasha falters. “He…”

“The truth, Agent Romanoff.”

“Yes,” she says quietly. She allows herself a brief glance at Bucky, slumped in his seat, glaring at the wood of the table in front of him. She can feel her old scars burning. _Forgive me_ , she wants to beg.

The lawyer in front of her fixes her with his stare. “Elaborate.”

Natasha’s chest tightens. “What do you want from me, exactly?”

“I want you to tell me about your time in the Red Room. Tell me exactly how they hurt you.”

Her heart begins to race as she understands what’s being asked of her. Her eyes search frantically for Clint’s as panic builds in her chest.

“Objection!” The young lawyer seated beside Bucky jumps to his feet and Natasha fights to conceal her relief. She’d known the second she’d walked into the courtroom and seen Matt Murdock that Bucky’s chances were as good as they’d ever be. Tony had promised nothing less than the best, and he’d stayed true to his word.

The judge turns to Matt, raising an eyebrow as an invitation.

“Your Honour, is it really necessary to force the witness to relive-”

The judge cuts him off. “Overruled.”

Natasha takes a shaking breath as she finds Clint’s eyes again and holds on. He pours everything he has into his gaze as he stands there; strong, steady, unwavering. He raises an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. A question. She nods once.

She allows her gaze to flick sideways, locking eyes first with Tony, and then with Bruce, before looking back at Clint. Her team. Her constants. Taking a deep breath, she opens her mouth and, ignoring the presence of everyone else in the courtroom, begins to tell Clint the stories he’s already heard before.

Natasha forces herself to look over at Bucky when she finishes speaking. To his credit, he meets her eyes and doesn’t look away. There’s shame written all over his face and she wonders how much of what she just said is new to him, how much he remembers from his time with the Red Room. _I forgive you_ , she wants to tell him. She hopes that she’ll get the chance to say the words to him later.

Relief courses through her veins as Matt comes to stand in front of her. “Thank you for your honesty, Natasha,” he says sincerely. “I just have a few more questions for you.”

She nods, desperately trying to maintain her composure, because she feels like she’s broken; cracked and leaking, feels like she’s just ripped her soul out of her body and nailed it to the wall for everyone to see. She hopes none of it shows on her face.

“You just told us about criminal acts committed against you in the Red Room by the defendant, James Barnes,” Matt continues. “And yet chose not to press charges and instead chose to testify for the defendant today. Why?”

“The serum,” she chokes out.

“Elaborate,” Matt says gently.

“Recruits of the Red Room were given a…modified version of the serum that was given to Steve Rogers. It was designed to take away our morals and our emotions and everything that made us human, to turn us into ruthless killers. It’s impossible to fight it for long. Some of the effects fade with time,” she says quietly. “Some don’t. I know, because I’ve experienced it firsthand. I did things I’m not proud of because they took away my humanity and turned me into a killing machine, a monster. But the woman who did those things wasn't Natasha Romanoff. And the man who hurt me, the man who spent the last few weeks causing destruction as a weapon for HYDRA, that wasn’t James Barnes. So put the KGB on trial,” she says, echoing Clint’s words from the night she’d made the decision to testify. “Put the Red Room on trial. Put HYDRA on trial. And leave the victims alone. God knows we’ve been through enough already.”

She knows she should stay on the witness stand until she’s dismissed but Natasha can’t bring herself to care. She’s all too aware of the eyes on her, eyes of all the people she’s just bared her soul to, and she needs to get away. She walks down the aisle briskly, eyes fixed on the door in front of her. It’s not until the heavy wooden doors shut behind her and she’s alone in the hallway that she finally allows herself to be weak. Closing her eyes and leaning her head against the wall she takes deep, shuddering breaths, desperately trying to hold herself together.

Clint shoulders past Bruce and Tony the second Natasha leaves the courtroom, following her out. His fears that he’ll have to search for her dissipate as soon as he leaves the courtroom and sees her leaning against the wall, her back to the door.

“Natasha,” he murmurs.

She turns, pressing herself into his arms wordlessly. Her grip on him is like iron and he can feel her unsteady breaths against his collarbone.

“You did amazing in there,” he whispers. “I’m so proud of you, Tash.”

She pulls back so she can look up at him, and there’s uncertainty in her eyes. “Do you think it was enough?”

“You did everything you could,” he tells her softly, bringing a hand up to cup her cheek. “It’ll be enough. It has to be.”

“I don’t want to go back in there, Clint.”

“Okay,” he says easily, slipping his hand into one of hers. “We won’t. Steve’s testifying right now but Tony’ll let us know when it’s over. Come on. Let’s get some caffeine in you.”

 ***

“You okay?” he asks her as she stares into her half-empty cup of coffee.

“Yeah. Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“That could have been me on trial today. I’m no better of a person than he is. Especially now that it turns out I was working for HYDRA the whole time I thought I was making things right.”

“Not the whole time,” Clint says gently. “You’ve helped a lot of people, Natasha. You’ve saved a lot of lives.”

“Name one.”

“Mine.”

“That’s not true, Clint. You saved me. I never-”

“Look at me.” He reaches across the table, wrapping his hand around her fingers. “Natasha, look at me.”

She looks up.

“You’ve saved me so many times. More than you could possibly know.”

“Same goes for you,” she says quietly.

He offers her a warm smile. “Then it’s a damn good thing we’re not keeping score.”

Clint looks down as his phone buzzes in his lap. In typical Stark fashion, Tony hadn’t told him what the verdict was, only to ‘get your ass back to the courtroom and bring your girlfriend with you’. Sighing, Clint pushes his chair out and stands.

“Tony?” Natasha inquires.

Clint nods. “You ready to go back there?”

“Yeah,” she reaches out to take his offered hand. “I’m ready.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel compelled, once again, to apologize profusely for how long it's taken me to update. Hopefully some of you still haven't given up on me. :P

They walk back hand in hand at a pace that probably looks casual and comfortable to any outsider, when in reality they’re dragging their feet because regardless of the calm they exude externally, they’re both on edge and probably will be until they know the verdict. Clint wants to believe that it all worked out, wants to believe that Natasha’s testimony was enough, wants to believe that whatever Steve said after the two of them left the courtroom only helped to solidify Bucky’s innocence. But the fact that Tony had told them there was a verdict, without bothering to mention what the verdict _was_ , makes him nervous.

He can feel the tension coursing through Natasha through their one point of contact and he squeezes her hand, a silent gesture of reassurance. She tilts her head slightly to look up at him and he’s floored, as he often is, by how _young_ she looks. Time has made every effort to make her hard, bitter, unyielding, and some might say that it’s succeeded, but Clint knows better.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks her.

She shrugs one shoulder. “Trying not to, mostly.”

“You did everything you could, Nat. Everyone knows that, no matter what happens.”

“It’s not fair, you know that?” She gazes at him with a frank honesty. “That the world just arbitrarily decides who to be cruel to and who to be kind to, that some have to fight to survive every day of their lives only to be blamed for being a pawn in someone else’s game. Tell me how that’s fair.”

“It’s not,” he answers, because it’s the truth. “But I’m sick of being angry at the world, Tash.”

“Me too,” she says quietly. “What if we start over?”

“What do you mean?”

She looks down at their joined hands. “In the Red Room they would have called it a reprogramming. But it’s not right to forget. It’s more like…I want to put my old self to rest. I don’t want her to have a hold on me anymore. Like when you go into the water and the person who comes out is still you but you’re different, changed.”

“A baptism?” Clint asks her.

“Baptism,” she echoes, nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah, I guess that’s it. Reprogramming without forgetting. The past is still there, but it can’t hurt us anymore.” She says the word again because she likes the way it rolls off of her tongue. “Baptism.”

 ***

The rest of the team is standing in a loose huddle on the steps of the courthouse when they arrive. Bucky breaks free of the group as soon as he sees them, running down the stairs two at a time to pull Natasha into his arms roughly.

“Clear?” she asks him, laughing breathlessly as she pulls back, the fingers of her left hand still laced through Clint’s.

“Thanks to you,” he says seriously, but the smile on his face reaches his eyes. Looking past him, Natasha sees the rest of their team; sees Tony grinning like a maniac and Steve smiling softly to himself, and she makes no effort to hold back the smile that spreads across her own face.

“All I did was tell the truth,” she says.

“Truth hurts sometimes,” he replies.

She swallows hard. “I had a teacher once, a long time ago, who taught me how to control the pain.”

“It’s over,” Clint says, squeezing her hand, shooting her a knowing look.

“It’s over,” she echoes. “Let’s go home.”

“I think this calls for a celebration,” Tony says. “Dinner on me?”

“Stark, if you take us to that shawarma place again-”

“I know it’s hard to believe, Cap, but I _do_ learn from my mistakes. How does Italian sound?”

Twenty minutes later finds them seated at a private table at the back of an Italian restaurant that Tony claims serves the best pasta in Manhattan, having their orders taken by a star struck waitress who keeps glancing at Steve furtively.

“Ten bucks says you won’t slip her your number, Rogers,” Tony teases when their waitress leaves to get drinks.

“I’ll do it,” Bucky volunteers immediately.

“Don’t make me regret saving your ass from getting thrown in jail, Buck.”

“Right, like I never got _you_ out of getting arrested.”

“Do tell,” Tony says, and Bucky launches into an animated account involving Steve, a bar fight, and him having to charm the bartender out of calling the police. As Tony and Bruce laugh appreciatively and Steve ducks his head in an attempt to hide his grin, Natasha scoots closer to where Clint’s sitting in the corner of the booth, pressing herself up against him. He loops an arm around her waist and she leans into him and they listen silently because they two of them have always been more comfortable on the periphery.

There’s no expectations for them here, Clint realizes. And as much as he misses SHIELD, misses the structure and the simplicity and the order and the routine of it all, he wouldn’t go back. He recognizes that that chapter of his life is done, that, like Natasha said, it’s time to start over. He doesn’t want to forget his time with SHIELD or his time before, doesn’t want to forget what were some of the best and some of the worst years of his life. But he doesn’t want the past to have a hold on him anymore.

As if Natasha can read his mind, she turns so that her lips are against his ear and murmurs, “I want you to be there when I start over.”

He knows she doesn’t mean now. As much as they’re a team, as much as they’ve grown to care deeply for the people around them, their new beginning has to be something they do alone.

He doesn’t ask why now. Natasha’s life has had so many endings and so many beginnings and he doesn’t question why this is the one that she’s arbitrarily decided to assign significance to. He knows that if she starts over, he’s going to start over right alongside her, because despite the fact that they don’t live a life that allows for making promises about forever, he can’t picture his life without her.

She tilts her head up and, despite the fact that they’re in public and surrounded by their teammates, presses her lips to his briefly. It tells Clint everything he needs to know; the fact that she’s willing to make this kind of claim, that she doesn’t care who sees them, that she is _his_ and he is _hers_ and the entire universe can fall to shit for all that it won’t ever change between them. It tastes like victory.

“Time to go?” he asks her as she pulls back. There’s a hint of uncertainty in her eyes, but she nods all the same.

“Go where?” Tony asks.

Clint slides out of the booth, one hand on Natasha’s waist. “There’s something we need to do.”

“You’ll come back?” Steve asks them, and it really is a question. They’re being given the option, the choice to stay away if they need to. They don’t have to stay. They’ve never had to stay.

It’s Natasha who answers, firmly, sliding her hand into Clint’s. “We’ll come back.”

 ***

“Drive,” Natasha tells him once they’re in the car.

“Anywhere in particular?”

“Water.” She pauses thoughtfully. “The ocean.”

She drifts in and out of sleep as he drives and the world gets steadily darker around them. The stars come out in ever increasing frequency as they leave the city lights behind them. It’s long past midnight by the time they reach the coast and Clint pulls the car over to the side of the road, staring out at the empty stretch of sand in front of them, followed by the seemingly endless vastness of the ocean.

“Tash,” he whispers softly. Her eyes flutter open and she slides out of her seat wordlessly, toeing off her shoes and relishing the feeling of the cold sand on the soles of her feet.

“Come on.” She holds out her hand and Clint takes it, letting her take the lead, knowing that he’ll follow no matter what. She stops at the edge of the ocean, just out of reach of the waves, and tilts her head up to look at him. The question is in her eyes but she voices it anyway. “Ready?”

Clint feels like everything in his life has led up to this moment. “What are we doing?”

A tentative smile creeps across her face and the gentle breeze plays softly with her hair and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “We’re running.”

The cold water bites, numbing his feet almost instantly, and Clint focuses on nothing but the feeling of Natasha’s hand around his as they run deeper and deeper out into the ocean, further and further away from the ghosts and the demons of their old lives. And finally, when they can’t run anymore, they fall, letting the water claim them, letting themselves be submerged, letting the waves wash them of everything they’ve been trying so hard to leave behind.

When they rise, hand in hand, it’s as two who have been reborn. They walk slowly out of the water and onto the shore of their future, collapsing into each other’s arms as they lie in the sand and wait for the sun to rise on the first day of the rest of their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have noticed, I've marked this complete. I'm sorry to end it so suddenly and without a warning, but it really does feel finished and I would feel wrong trying to continue it. For those of you who aren't sick of me yet, don't worry, I'll be back! I'm working on three different stories right now and am always accepting prompts on [tumblr](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com), so if there's anything you'd like me to write, feel free to come spam my inbox. Thank you guys so much for your continued support throughout both this story and the one before it. I love you all endlessly. <3


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